RESEARCH ARTICLE The influence of biomass energy consumption on CO 2 emissions: a wavelet coherence approach Faik Bilgili 1 & İlhan Öztürk 2 & Emrah Koçak 3 & Ümit Bulut 4 & Yalçın Pamuk 5 & Erhan Muğaloğlu 6 & Hayriye H. Bağlıtaş 1 Received: 18 May 2016 /Accepted: 13 June 2016 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Abstract In terms of today, one may argue, throughout ob- servations from energy literature papers, that (i) one of the main contributors of the global warming is carbon dioxide emissions, (ii) the fossil fuel energy usage greatly contributes to the carbon dioxide emissions, and (iii) the simulations from energy models attract the attention of policy makers to renew- able energy as alternative energy source to mitigate the carbon dioxide emissions. Although there appears to be intensive renewable energy works in the related literature regarding renewables’ efficiency/impact on environmental quality, a re- searcher might still need to follow further studies to review the significance of renewables in the environment since (i) the existing seminal papers employ time series models and/or panel data models or some other statistical observation to de- tect the role of renewables in the environment and (ii) existing papers consider mostly aggregated renewable energy source rather than examining the major component(s) of aggregated renewables. This paper attempted to examine clearly the im- pact of biomass on carbon dioxide emissions in detail through time series and frequency analyses. Hence, the paper follows wavelet coherence analyses. The data covers the US monthly observations ranging from 1984:1 to 2015 for the variables of total energy carbon dioxide emissions, biomass energy con- sumption, coal consumption, petroleum consumption, and natural gas consumption. The paper thus, throughout wavelet coherence and wavelet partial coherence analyses, observes frequency properties as well as time series properties of rele- vant variables to reveal the possible significant influence of biomass usage on the emissions in the USA in both the short- term and the long-term cycles. The paper also reveals, finally, that the biomass consumption mitigates CO 2 emissions in the long run cycles after the year 2005 in the USA. Keywords Biomass energy . Fossil energy . CO 2 emissions . Wavelet coherence . Signal processing . Energy consumption Introduction Energy is a vital factor of production for an economy since all economic activities are materialized through the usage of en- ergy. An increase in energy demand of countries has similar Communicated by: Philippe Garrigues * Faik Bilgili fbilgili@erciyes.edu.tr İlhan Öztürk ilhanozturk@cag.edu.tr Emrah Koçak ekocak@ahievran.edu.tr Ümit Bulut ubulut@ahievran.edu.tr Yalçın Pamuk ylcnpamuk@gmail.com Erhan Muğaloğlu erhan.mugaloglu@agu.edu.tr Hayriye H. Bağlıtaş hhilalbaglitas@erciyes.edu.tr 1 FEAS, Erciyes University, 38039 Kayseri, Turkey 2 FEAS, Çağ University, 33800 Mersin, Turkey 3 Mucur Vocational School, Ahi Evran University, 40500 Kırşehir, Turkey 4 FEAS, Ahi Evran University, 40500 Kırşehir, Turkey 5 SSI, Erciyes University, 38039 Kayseri, Turkey 6 Economics, Abdullah Gül University, 38170 Kayseri, Turkey Environ Sci Pollut Res DOI 10.1007/s11356-016-7094-2