Investigating the N-shaped EKC in China: An imperious role of energy use and health expenditures

Since the industrial revolution, the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) has been steadily increasing. Notably, China emitted 27% of the world's GHGs in 2019, making it the world's most significant contributor to climate degradation. The key objectives of this investigation are to ascertain the N-shaped association between CO2 emissions and economic growth in the presence of energy use and domestic government health expenditures. Besides, the research inspected the role of the Belt and Road Initiative through economic globalization in China. The study utilized the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model and found that N-shaped EKC exists in China. Furthermore, the study discovered that economic globalization improves ecological excellence in the short run. Nonetheless, energy consumption and health expenditures considerably amplify the intensity of CO2 emanation in China in the long run. The research suggested that installing green industry through economic globalization can imperatively lessen environmental degradation. Moreover, installing technological firms will be more beneficial in the long run to overcome environmental degradation rather than importing from other countries. The study elaborated momentous causation effects among the study variables through the Granger causality test.

Perspective on China's commitment to carbon neutrality under the innovation-energy-emissions nexus

The changing landscape in global geopolitics of energy security coupled with post-COVID slow economic recovery has raised concerns about China's carbon neutrality commitment. This study seeks to answer the role of China's green innovation, renewables, non-renewables, and GDP for CO2 emissions using the novel Quantile Auto-regressive Distributed Lag (QARDL) model over an extended period from 1990 to 2020. The results conclude that green innovation can reduce CO2 emissions by up to three times with a 1:3 ratio while renewable energy sources are able to cut CO2 emissions with a modest rate of return at a 1:0.8 ratio. Similarly, with a 1:3.5 ratio, fossil fuels which still account for more than 83% of total energy consumption are highly emission-intensive. GDP spurs CO2 emissions but at a decreasing rate. In addition, the results also conclude the validation of the EKC hypothesis, meaning that GDP has the potential to offset environmental degradation in both short- and long-run paths. In the current situation, the renewable energy sector is environmentally inefficient and needs policy reforms. Considering the current economic slowdown and potential future challenges to energy security, the country needs to take stringent policy measures to fulfill its existing commitments in self-interest.

Does income inequality reshape the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis? A nonlinear panel data analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased income inequality. This work is aimed to explore the impact of income inequality on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. To this end, income inequality is set as the threshold variable, economic growth is set as the explanatory variable, while carbon emission is set as the explained variable, and the threshold panel model is developed using the data of 56 countries. The empirical results show that income inequality has changed the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions from an inverted U-shaped to an N-shaped, which means that income inequality redefines the environmental Kuznets curve and increases the complexity of the decoupling of economic growth and carbon emissions. Specifically, economic growth significantly increases carbon emissions during periods of low income inequality, however, as income inequality increases, economic growth in turn suppresses carbon emissions. In the period of high income inequality, economic growth inhibits the increase of carbon emissions. However, with the increase of income inequality, the impact of economic growth on carbon emission changes from inhibiting to promoting. Panel regressions for robustness tests show that this phenomenon is more pronounced in high-income countries. We therefore contend that the excessive income inequality is bad for the win-win goal of economic growth without carbon emission growth, and the income distribution policy should be included in the carbon neutral strategy.

Lithium production, electricity consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions: An imperious role of economic globalization

China has resorted to electric vehicles to tackle the Greenhouse gas emissions engendered through the transport sector. Despite the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, electric vehicle sales in China were 1.3 million, which accounts for an increment of 8% in comparison with 2019. It will attain a peak point in 2030, causing an incredible increase in electricity usage. Hence, this increase has sparked a new debate among energy management and environmental economics scholars, as China produces 65% of its electricity through coal. The on-hand investigation revealed the imperative impact of lithium production, electricity usage, and economic globalization on the carbon footprints calculated in China. Moreover, the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is also tested in this framework. The study found the imperious role of electricity usage and economic globalization in Greenhouse gas emissions in China. However, lithium production reported weak and inconsequential findings. Detailed policy inferences and long-term policy implications are discussed in the discussion and conclusion section, respectively.

Environmental strategies for achieving a new foreign direct investment golden decade in Algeria.

While numerous studies have discussed the impact of economic growth on the environment, this paper advances in the empirical literature, aiming to validate the existence of an N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) relationship between the ecological footprint and economic growth in Algeria during the period 1975-2014. The proposed empirical model includes as additional explanatory variables the foreign direct investment (FDI) and the electricity consumption aimed to increase the relevance of the results, correcting the lack of studies that have previously analyzed the EKC for the case of Algeria. Through the ARDL econometric approach, we confirm an N-shaped EKC between the per capita economic growth and ecological footprint in Algeria, reinforcing these results using the FMOLS and DOLS techniques. In the long run, the empirical results confirmed that the N-shaped EKC in Algeria is valid; electricity consumption and foreign direct investment directly impact ecological footprint. Even though the main objective of this study is to assess the N-shaped EKC, the novelty of the paper is the analysis of the interaction between FDI and electricity consumption. The empirical evidence reveals that FDI contributes to reducing the negative impact of fossil sources in the energy mix in Algeria through the transition to a cleaner energy mix pattern. In the final step of our analysis, we explore the causal nexus among variables by applying the Toda Yamamoto non-causality test. The Toda Yamamoto non-causality test reveals a unidirectional causality between economic growth and ecological footprint; one-run relationship flows from electricity consumption to ecological footprint, and economic growth leads to cause foreign-direct investment. These empirical results evidence the necessity of establishing suitable policies after the gold decade of the FDI in Algeria, being required to advance in this line to come back to ascending levels of FDI after the financial crisis of 2008 and the current COVID-19 crisis. In this sense, policymakers should consider the advantages of FDI for promoting clean foreign investment, necessary for reaching a transition to sustainable development in Algeria. In this sense, this study proposes a battery of environmental strategies to achieve this objective and sustainable growth in the country. Thus, policy implications and directions for future research are suggested.

Testing the moderating role of trade openness on the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis: a novel approach.

We explore the moderating role of trade openness (TO) by gauging its main and interaction effects on the economic growth and environmental quality nexus. In this direction, we implement a novel approach by using three different measures of pollution emissions (CO2-CH4-PM2.5) in the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis and applying a structural equation modelling methodology to 115 countries, grouped into low-, middle- and high-income countries, spanning the period 1992-2018. The evidence suggests that energy consumption has a positive impact on CO2 emissions for all income panels whilst the moderating effect of TO appears to be a key degrading factor of environmental quality in low- and middle-income countries. In addition, TO's interaction with GDP growth is found to negatively affect environmental quality across all income groups. Given that global economies are on the verge of returning to pre-pandemic levels of industrial operations along with emissions in the wake of the failure of COP26 and that COVID-19 has reminded the world the urgency of developing sustainable approaches in fostering 'green economic growth' models; a host of policy measures are proposed in support of this whilst their likely implications are discussed with reference to different income level countries.

The roles of economic growth and health expenditure on CO2 emissions in selected Asian countries: a quantile regression model approach.

Continuous economic growth and the rise in energy consumption are linked with environmental pollution. Demand for health care expenditure increased after the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is interesting in modeling the nexus between public and private health expenditure, carbon dioxide emissions, and economic growth. To this end, the present study analyzed the nexus between public and private health care expenditure, economic growth, and environmental pollution for 36 Asian countries for the period 1991-2017. FMOLS, GMM, and quantile regression analysis confirm the EKC hypothesis in Asia. Besides, FMOLS and quantile regressions reached the reducing effects of government and private health expenditures on CO2 emissions. While quantile regression results show that public and private health expenditures can mitigate CO2 emissions; however, these results differ for various levels of CO2. Findings of quantile regression show a significant impact of both public and private health expenditures in reducing CO2 at the 50th and 75th quantiles but results are insignificant for the 25th quantile. Overall, the paper concludes that both government and private health sectors' expenditures caused CO2 emissions to decrease in Asia and that the negative impact of the private health sector on CO2 emissions is greater than that of the government health sector. The concluding remark is that the higher the health spending, the higher the environmental quality will be in Asia. Hence, the health administrators need to increase public and private health expenditures with an effective cost-service and energy-efficient management approach to reach sustainable health services and a sustainable environment in Asia.