Does Renewable Energy Increase Trade Integration? New Evidence from BRICS-T Countries Using Fourier Methods

IntroductionSince the turn of the century, world trade has more than tripled to $30.7 trillion in 2023 (UNCTAD, 2024), and trade has been a major engine for economic growth and technology diffusion.However, the rapid expansion of global trade has also raised environmental pressures, in particular by increasing the carbon intensity of cross-border production and transportation (Wang et al., 2022).The relationship between trade and the environment has been studied in the framework of scale, composition, and technique effects (Grossman & Krueger, 1991), however, most of the studies have been concerned with the impact of trade openness and integration on the environment, and much less is known about the reverse relationship, i.e. the