The Peak Of Carbon Emissions In India-an Empirical Study

India is the world's third largest emitter of CO₂ emissions.While China and US,the world first and second largest CO₂ emitters have already peaked their emissions,India's CO₂ emissions are still growing recently.It is thus very interesting to explore when and where India may reach its highest level of CO₂ emissions.To do so,we followed the Environment Kuznets Curve?EKC?theory,and investigated whether there exists,an inverted U shape relationship between GDP and CO₂ emissions in India.More specifically,we adopted Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model?ARDL?to explore the relationship between CO₂ and various sustainable economic variables which include fossil fuels energy consumption,GDP,trade openness,size of agriculture land use and rural population density.For this purpose time series data of aforesaid variables for forty four years has been used.The results suggested that there is a long term relationship between CO₂ and all the sustainable economic variables which are considered the main factors for emissions.More specifically,GDP,Size of Agriculture land,Fossil fuels,Rural population density and Trade openness all have an impact on environment at a very big scale.But according to our main objective,EKC for CO₂ emissions exists in India,and India's CO₂ emission would peak at the level of 11.234 trillion US$GDP,more than 4.5 times of 2.487 trillion US$GDP of 2017.If the forecasted growth rate of 7.40 percent by OECD and World Bank is followed,then India would reach this level within21 years from 2018 which means India would realize its highest level of carbon emission by2039.This is not consistent with India's pledges under Paris Agreement where India agreed to reduce its GHG emissions by 33%-35%below 2005 level by 2030.India still needs to make stronger policies in the improvement of energy efficiency and development of renewable energies,to strengthen its CO₂ reduction that is consistent with India's domestic as well as global target in climate change mitigation,without hampering its GDP growth and increase of living standard.