Race to environmental sustainability: Can renewable energy consumption and technological innovation sustain the strides for China?

Qiaoyan Xie, Tomiwa Adebayo (), Muhammad Irfan () and Mehmet Altuntaş

Renewable Energy, 2022, vol. 197, issue C, 320-330

Abstract: Several Asian nations, including China, are experiencing issues with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets. Consequently, this research discusses the design of an SDG agenda for China that can be utilized as a model for other Asian nations. Accordingly, we scrutinize the effect of technological innovation and renewable energy on CO2 in China. The study also incorporates other CO2 drivers such as economic growth and structural change into the framework. The current research employed a dataset covering the period from 1985 to 2019. Furthermore, we utilized autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) to capture the associations between CO2 emissions and the exogenous variables. In addition, we employed the gradual shift causality test to identify the causal interconnection. This technique can capture smooth or gradual changes and does not require prior knowledge of the dates, number, or form of a break (s). The outcomes from the ARDL disclosed that 1% increases in structural change and economic growth cause CO2 to increase by 1.600% and 0.819%, respectively, while 1% increases in renewable and technological innovation lessen CO2 by 0.688% and 0.090%, respectively. Moreover, the EKC hypothesis is supported. Moreover, the combined effect of renewable energy and innovation demonstrates that innovation enhances environmental quality by regulating the interrelationship between renewable energy and CO2. Lastly, the gradual shift causality test disclosed that CO2 emissions could be predicted by the exogenous variables. Based on these results, policy recommendations are proposed.

Keywords: CO2 emissions' structural change; Technological innovation; Renewable energy use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:197:y:2022:i:c:p:320-330

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2022.07.138

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