Environmental footprint impacts of nuclear energy consumption: The role of environmental technology and globalization in ten largest ecological footprint countries

This study investigates the environmental footprint impacts of nuclear energy consumption in the presence of environmental technology and globalization of the ten largest ecological footprint countries from 1990 up to 2017. By considering a set of methods that can help solve the issue of cross-sectional dependence, we employ the Lagrange multiplier bootstrap cointegration method, Driscoll-Kraay standard errors for long-run estimation and feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) and panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) for robustness. The finding revealed significant negative effects of nuclear energy consumption, environmental-related technology, population density and significant positive effects of globalization and economic growth on ecological footprint. These results are also robust by assessing the long-run impacts of predictors on carbon footprint and CO2 emissions as alternate ecological measures. These conclusions provide the profound significance of nuclear energy consumption for environmentally sustainable development in the top ten ecological footprint countries and serve as an important reference for ecological security for other countries globally.