Exploring the Road toward Environmental Sustainability: Natural Resources, Renewable Energy Consumption, Economic Growth, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Yugang He, Xiang Li, Panpan Huang and Jingnan Wang
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Yugang He: College of Commerce, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju 54896, Korea
Xiang Li: College of Tourism and Urban-Rural Planning, Xichang University, Xichang 615000, China
Panpan Huang: College of Business and Economics, Chuang-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Korea
Jingnan Wang: College of Economics, Qufu Normal University, Rizhao 276826, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Despite the fact that China’s economy has grown swiftly since the reform and opening up, the problem of environmental degradation in China has become increasingly significant. Therefore, this paper uses China as an example to examine the dynamic relationship between the highlighted variables (renewable energy consumption, economic growth, oil rent, and natural resources) and greenhouse gas emissions (a proxy for environmental sustainability). Using annual data over the period 1971–2018 and employing the auto-regressive distributed lag bounds approach to perform an empirical analysis, the results suggest that there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between the highlighted variables and greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, renewable energy consumption and oil rent contribute to environmental sustainability because of their negative effects on greenhouse gas emissions. On the contrary, economic growth and natural resources hinder environmental sustainability due to their positive effects on greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, using the fully modified ordinary least squares approach and dynamic ordinary least squares approach to conduct a robustness test, the results also support the previous findings. To conclude, the findings of this paper may provide some solutions for China’s environmental sustainability.

Keywords: greenhouse gas emissions; natural resources; renewable energy consumption; economic growth; oil rent; environmental sustainability; auto-regressive distributed lag bounds test (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

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