Is Faster Internet Associated with Cleaner Air? Satellite Evidence on Digital Infrastructure and Nitrogen Dioxide in Uzbekistan and Central Asia

Studies of Chinese regions, mostly using composite indices and estimated or allocated emissions, report that digitalisation reduces carbon emissions. This study re-examines the claim for one component of digitalisation, network quality, using directly measured quantities: tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) columns from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) and crowdsourced Ookla speed and latency measurements for 161 districts of Uzbekistan in 2019–2025 and 42 regions of Central Asia. Fixed-effects panel regressions with a correction for the 2021 TROPOMI processor change and population controls give an elasticity of NO2 with respect to mobile download speed of 0.001 (95% confidence interval −0.013 to 0.015). Given the 7.4-fold rise in the average district’s speed, this interval bounds the associated change in NO2 between −2.6% and +3.0%. The estimate remains small and insignificant with meteorological controls, in a consistently reprocessed TROPOMI record, at quarterly resolution and with speed from a fixed set of map tiles. An equivalence test rejects elasticities of 0.013 or more in absolute value. None of the three heterogeneity hypotheses from an unregistered analysis plan survives a Holm correction. District-level emissions from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) for road transport and buildings largely reproduce national changes. Within districts, faster mobile networks were not associated with a measurable change in NO2.

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