Biomass energy production and its impacts on the ecological footprint: An investigation of the G7 countries

In recent years, the impacts of biomass energy consumption on the environment have attracted the attention of policymakers and scholars. Although empirical studies have been conducted on this topic, the relationship between biomass energy production and the ecological footprint has been overlooked in the literature. This study seeks to fill this gap by investigating the effects of biomass energy production on the ecological footprint of the G7 countries for the period 1980–2016. For this purpose, we use a set of methods, that help overcome the problem of cross-sectional dependence in panel data analysis. The findings from dynamic seemingly unrelated regression (DSUR) estimation show that biomass energy production increases the ecological footprint of the G7 countries. Meanwhile, a Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test provides evidence that unidirectional causality runs from biomass energy production to the ecological footprint. Based on these empirical results, several policy recommendations are proposed for the G7 countries.