ACADEMIC PAPER The empirical relationship between carbon emission and energy use of BRICS nations Narendra N. Dalei | Hiranmoy Roy Department of Economics and International Business, School of Business (SoB), University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, India Correspondence Narendra N. Dalei, Department of Economics and International Business, School of Business (SoB), University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Kandoli Campus, Knowledge Acres, Dehradun 248007 India. Email: ndalei@ddn.upes.ac.in; nndalei@ gmail.com In literature, there has been a large number of empirical research to examine the impact of CO2 emission on economic activity popularly known as the Environmental Kuznets curve having an inverted U shape relationship. The increasing environmental problem and environmental degradation are global phenomena due to increasing eco- nomic activities. In order to verify this relationship empirically in the context of BRICS nations, the present study intends to investigate the importance of energy use in the estimation of carbon emission while controlling GDP, industry value added and trade openness using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Fixed Effect (FE) Models. Our findings have confirmed that the relationship between CO2 emission and GDP con- firmed inverted U-shaped of the EKC. The direction of the relationship between squared LNIVA and LNCO2P further reinforce the inverted U-shaped EKC. The rela- tionship between LNEU and CO2P also satisfied the inverted U-shape of the EKC. This may be due to the practice of energy efficiency and energy conservation mea- sures in industrial sectors in BRICS nations. However, BRICS nations should also emphasize renewables and policies need to be aligned accordingly to keep CO2 emis- sion at a lower level so that global warming could be kept to below 1.50  C, which is the target given by Paris Agreements. 1 | INTRODUCTION The increasing environmental problem and environmental degradation are global phenomenon due to increasing economic activities. We came across number of studies in the literature those addresses the relationship between economic activity represented by GDP and the environmental quality represented by several indicators. In literature, there has been large number of empirical research to examine the EKC hypothesis that postulates an inverted U shaped relationship among GDP reflecting economic activity and environmental pollution represented by CO2 emission and environmental effect due to accen- tuating environmental problem and environmental degradation glob- ally. Environmental degradation is measured by the level of pollution and emissions or CO2 emissions etc. Many researchers worked and analyzed this relationship without giving any specific direction and causality between these variables. However, most of the studies have confirmed this relationship through experiment and thus investigated the existence or absence of statistically significant relationship between these variables. The empirical studies have estimated the regression line of impact of GDP activity on CO2 emission. These studies have used cross-country cross-sectional data and examined whether the causal relationship is inverted U-shape or not? The results of this research have postulated a unidirectional relationship that shows that a variation in GDP represented by economic activity causes a resulting impact on environment. This relationship may not hold true in all situations. It is very important to understand whether level of economic activity is a dependent or independent variable with respect to environmental quality and this relationship will be affected by various macro-economic characteristics under consideration. We can also use econometric tools like granger causality test for the time series data set showing level of activity and resultant environmental change having statistically significant association or among these vari- ables and what is the direction of causality (Coondoo & Dinda, 2002). There are several studies with respect to this relationship con- ducted in the year 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 by several authors. This is observed from this literature that there are important evidences of direction of causality exists between the three variables mentioned in our study. There are no one way causality among these. Received: 29 March 2020 Accepted: 8 April 2020 DOI: 10.1002/pa.2154 J Public Affairs. 2020;e2154. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 1 of 6 https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2154