RESEARCH ARTICLE Enhancing sustainable electricity consumption in a large ecological reserve–based country: the role of democracy, ecological footprint, economic growth, and globalisation in Brazil Ojonugwa Usman 1,2 & Iormom Bruce Iortile 3 & George Nwokike Ike 1 Received: 22 October 2019 /Accepted: 21 January 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract The objective of this study is to investigate the role of democracy, ecological footprint, economic growth, and globalisation in enhancing sustainable electricity consumption in an ecological reserve–based country of Brazil over the period 1971–2014. To achieve this objective, the minimum Lagrange multiplier (LM) unit root and Bayer–Hanck combined cointegration tests are applied. The model is estimated using the fully modified ordinary least squares (FM-OLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) estimation procedures. The empirical results suggest that all the variables have a positive and significant effect on electricity consumption. This implies that increasing the level of these variables would stimulate electricity consumption. The long-run causality results indicate a one-way causality running from ecological footprint, democracy, and globalisation to electricity consumption. The results further discover that causality flows from ecological footprint, democracy, and globalisation to economic growth. In addition, a long-run bidirectional causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth is uncovered. In the short run, the result validates a bidirectional causality between ecological footprint and electricity consumption. More so, electricity consumption causes economic growth and democracy, whilst economic growth causes glob- alisation. The results are validated by the innovation accounting tests. The policy implication of the findings is that ecological- based conservation policies could have negative consequences on economic growth and electricity consumption because of a significant dependence of these two variables on the ecological footprint. Therefore, to guarantee sustainable electricity con- sumption, sufficient and sustainable green energy and optimum energy mix should be encouraged by the stakeholders. Keywords Electricity consumption . Ecological footprint . Globalisation . Democracy . Economic growth . Brazil JEL classification C32 . Q43 Introduction The research on energy consumption and GDP began with the seminal paper of Kraft and Kraft (1978) wherein the relation- ship between energy use and the gross national product of the USA was empirically analysed. This study gave birth to the policy framework for the conservation hypothesis following a unidirectional causal flow from GNP to energy use in the USA which implies that energy conservation policies may not have any long-run implication for economic growth. This result has been corroborated by other studies in the literature (see Ozturk et al. 2010; Fallahi 2011; Caraiani et al. 2015; Rafindadi 2015; Rafindadi and Ozturk 2017; Dogan and Turkekul 2016). Furthermore, other empirical studies, which have employed different countries on the basis of time-series and panel- Responsible editor: Eyup Dogan * Ojonugwa Usman usmanojonugwa@gmail.com Iormom Bruce Iortile tillayior@umm.edu.ng 1 Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, North Cyprus, via Mersin 10, Turkey 2 School of Business Education, Federal College of Education (Technical), Potiskum, Yobe State, Nigeria 3 Department of Economics, University of Mkar, Mkar, Nigeria Environmental Science and Pollution Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-07815-3