Résumé
The recent global recession due to Covid-19 has led to a drop in natural resource prices, which has contracted energy demand. Amid this concern, environmentally sustainable renewable energy projects have become uncompetitive and an obstacle to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Following the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model proposed by Shin et al. (2014), to asymmetrically explore the impact of green bonds on renewable energy investment and environmental pollution and the impact of renewable energy consumption on environmental degradation in China over the period 1970–2020. The results show that the expansion of green bonds (GB+) significantly promotes renewable energy investment and reduces environmental pollution, while the contraction of green bonds (GB−) significantly reduces renewable energy investment and stimulates environmental damage. Likewise, expansion of renewable energy consumption (REC+) significantly reduced environmental degradation, while contraction of renewable energy consumption (REC−) significantly contributed to environmental degradation. Moreover, the result also validates the existence of inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis in China The VECM Granger causality test indicate that renewable energy investment, green finance, renewable energy consumption, CO2 emission, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have long term causality. Chinese policymakers must focus on strengthening green finance, which will encourage renewable energy investment and renewable energy generation. Moreover, renewable electricity output greatly facilitates renewable energy investment, so China must innovate policies to take into account renewable electricity rather than fossil fuel generation in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).