Analyzing asymmetric ecological performance under structural change, technological innovation, and trade diversification: fresh insights from the USA.

The present research scrutinizes the influences of trade diversification, air transportation, technological innovation, and economic complexity on ecological footprint from 1990 to 2019. The findings of the both time series unit root (with and without structural break) tests confirm that none of a single variable is stationary more than the first difference. Furthermore, the Wald and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag bound methods check asymmetry and long-term cointegration relationship between the intended variables, respectively. Moreover, this study uses the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model to estimate the short-run and long-run coefficients/elasticity of the ecological footprint function. Following the empirical evidence, the findings revealed that positive (negative) components in trade diversification curtail the ecological footprint in the long-run. In addition, a positive shock in air transportation leads to an increase in ecological footprint in the long-run. Nevertheless, a negative shock in air transportation exerts a significant and adverse influence on the level of ecological footprint in the long-run. Furthermore, a positive (negative) shock in technological developments significantly reduces environmental pollution in the US economy in the long-run. Besides, the outcomes from economic complexity discovered a positive shock will significantly overcome the pressure on the environment in the long-run. However, in the short-run, it is observed that negative shock in trade diversification will lead to increase the ecological footprint level in USA. Similarly, a positive shock in air transportation will lead to increase the pollution level in the short-run. In contrast, a negative shock in air transportation will lead to reduce the pressure on the environment in the short-run. Besides, in terms of policy realization, the present research recommends adopting trade synchronization, harmonic trade strategies, and investment in technological innovations to diminish the existing level of ecological footprint in the region. For sustainable development, this study put forward for instantaneously encouraging the expansion of the digital economy and reducing air pollution, accelerating the green transformation, and impelling the industrial agglomeration process in the USA.

Do all renewable energy stocks react to the war in Ukraine? Russo-Ukrainian conflict perspective.

This study investigates how renewable energy markets reacted to the war in Ukraine in 2022 using event study and network connectedness analyses and compares this effect to traditional energy sources. Combining event study with connectedness analysis is of great interest in identifying abnormal returns from the Russia-Ukraine conflict event. The risk-return profiles make clean energy more appealing to investors, and increased investment in clean energy subsectors leads to improved climate change mitigation. Sampled data are wrangled daily from 03 August 2021 to 30 March 2022. The results confirm that renewable energy markets have positive and significant cumulative abnormalities while traditional energy markets are heavily affected during the post-war. Moreover, we find higher pairwise return connectedness after the announcement event than during and before the war in Ukraine. The geothermal and full cell markets are the more robust net information transmitter to other clean energy subsectors. Finally, renewable energy appeared more pertinent during and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, given its properties to serve diversifications and hedging tools.

The impact of economic uncertainty, economic growth and energy consumption on environmental degradation in MENA countries: Fresh insights from multiple thresholds NARDL approach.

This paper explores the influence of economic policy uncertainty on environmental quality in selected MENA countries depending on an augmented STIRPAT model over the period 1970-2020. ARDL model and its extensions like augmented ARDL, augmented NARDL, and MTNARDL models are applied to detect any possible effect from uncertainty index to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The empirical results reveal the validity of environmental Kuznet curve (EKC) curve in all the countries. Moreover, the results show that the uncertainty index enhances environmental degradation, especially in extremely large changes in Morocco, Turkey, and Iran. Besides, the findings reveal that energy consumption and population in the entire sample escalates CO2 emissions over the study period. Consequently, policymakers in MENA countries should consider the economic uncertainty index, particularly in light of its recent rise, when developing any strategies and plans aimed at improving environmental standards, as well as the need to encourage the use of renewable energies in order to increase the percentage of their contribution to total energy consumption.

Pathways to Argentina's 2050 carbon-neutrality agenda: the roles of renewable energy transition and trade globalization.

The government of Argentina has recently declared its objective of turning the nation carbon-neutral by 2050. Thus, it is essential to identify the relevant factors which can facilitate the attainment of this environmental development target. Against this backdrop, this study aims to evaluate the impacts of renewable electricity output, trade globalization, economic growth, financial development, urbanization, and technological innovation on sectoral carbon dioxide emissions in Argentina during the 1971-2014 period. The findings, overall, suggest that enhancing renewable electricity output share in the total electricity output figure of the nation helps to curb carbon dioxide emissions generated from Argentina's energy, manufacturing and industry, residential and commercial buildings, and transportation sectors. Contrarily, greater trade globalization is evidenced to boost carbon dioxide emissions in almost all the aforementioned economic sectors. Besides, the findings also validate the existence of the carbon dioxide emission-induced environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for all four sectors. In addition, financial development and urbanization are also evidenced to exert carbon dioxide emission-stimulating impacts, while technological innovation is witnessed to be necessary for curbing sector-based carbon dioxide emissions in Argentina. Accordingly, to decarbonize the economy, this study recommends the government of Argentina to adopt necessary policies for fostering renewable energy transition within the electricity sector, greening the trade globalization strategies, achieving environmentally sustainable economic growth, developing the financial sector by introducing green financial schemes, planning sustainable urbanization, and financing technological development-oriented projects.

A step towards sustainable path: The effect of globalization on China's carbon productivity from panel threshold approach.

Surfacing the stress of global CO2 emission reduction and the change into a low-emission economy has become one of the prominent economic concerns in the twenty-first century. The essence of evolving a low-emission economy is to raise carbon productivity that can be estimated as the cost-effective paybacks of CO2 emissions. A panel threshold model was applied to approximate the threshold effect of globalization on carbon productivity under the development of human capital by using the panel data of thirty provinces of China from 2009 to 2017. The empirical findings demonstrate that China's carbon productivity increases, while economic growth shape moves towards sustainable development with low-carbon emission. Moreover, the driving force of globalization on carbon productivity is not tediously decreasing/increasing, but it has a double threshold effect of human capital. In line with this, this study finding found a single and double threshold of 9.3478 and 10.8800, respectively, as a benchmark where the relationship turns positive. The empirical findings have suggested several policy implications for the Chinese Government, policymakers, and regulatory authorities regarding this critical issue.

The nexus between environmental regulations, economic growth, and environmental sustainability: linking environmental patents to ecological footprint reduction in South Asia.

Environmental sustainability has become a major concern for policymakers across the globe. In this regard, understanding the factors responsible for environmental degradation is particularly important for developing nations. Against this backdrop, this study aims to evaluate the impacts of environmental regulations and other vital macroeconomic aggregates on the ecological footprints in the context of four fossil fuel-dependent South Asian countries: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The major findings from the econometric analysis, accounting for cross-sectional dependency, slope heterogeneity, and structural break issues in the data, reveal that environmental regulations portray significant roles in directly and indirectly reducing the ecological footprints across South Asia. Besides, the elasticity estimates verify the authenticity of the environmental Kuznets curve and the pollution haven hypotheses. On the other hand, non-renewable and renewable energy consumptions are found to increase and decrease the ecological footprints, respectively. Moreover, renewable energy use and environmental regulations are found to jointly reduce the ecological footprints further. More importantly, environmental regulations are predicted to reduce the adverse environmental impacts of economic growth, non-renewable energy use, and foreign direct investment inflows while increasing the favorable environmental impacts associated with renewable energy use. Furthermore, the country-specific impacts of environmental regulations on the ecological footprints are found to be more or less homogeneous to the corresponding panel estimates. The environmental Kuznets curve and pollution haven hypotheses are evidenced to hold for the majority of the four South Asia nations. In line with these findings, several relevant policy-level suggestions are put forward.

The roles of nuclear energy, renewable energy, and economic growth in the abatement of carbon dioxide emissions in the G7 countries.

In the current century, the G7 countries have attached more importance to energy security, and have prioritized low-carbon sources which have necessitated the consumption of nuclear and renewable energy resources to achieve a resilient low-carbon system. However, it is still not clear if the sacrifice has paid-off since the environmental quality in the majority of these countries is yet to be significantly improved. As such, this study employs advanced panel data econometric techniques that account for cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity issues to explore the impacts of nuclear and renewable energy use in respect of CO2 emission mitigation in six of the seven G7 countries. The core objective of this study is to justify whether energy diversification through the promotion of nuclear and renewable energy consumption can assist the G7 nations in complying with their commitments concerning the Paris Climate Change and Sustainable Development Goals agendas. The overall findings from the econometric analysis affirm the abating role of nuclear energy on CO2 emissions. However, renewable energy consumption is found to be statistically insignificant in explaining the variations in the CO2 emission levels. On the other hand, economic growth is found to initially boost the CO2 emission level but mitigate it later on; thus, the authenticity of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is established in the G7 context. Besides, the country-specific results suggest that nuclear energy significantly reduces CO2 emissions in all the countries, except in Canada and the USA. Also, renewable energy significantly curbs CO2 emissions only in Canada and France. Furthermore, the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is validated for Canada, France, the UK, and the USA. In line with these findings, it is pertinent for the G7 countries to boost nuclear energy use to reduce the fossil fuel dependency in the majority of the G7 nations to mitigate CO2 emissions. Moreover, it is also suggested that these nations adopt relevant policies to further green their consumption and production processes to ensure complementarity between economic growth and environmental development.

The step towards environmental mitigation in Pakistan: do transportation services, urbanization, and financial development matter?

This study is a scholarly effort to broaden the existing literature on the impact of transportation services, urbanization, and financial development on ecological footprints in Pakistan. Data used in this study covers the period of 39 years from 1980 to 2018. This study adopted the QARDL model to tackle the non-linear association of variables and test their long-run stability across the different quantiles. The findings of this study indicated a significant negative association of transportation services and financial development with ecological footprints in Pakistan at almost all quantiles whereas, the urban population was found to be positively associated with the ecological footprint in Pakistan. Results also justify the existence of the EKC hypothesis in the scenario of Pakistan. Policymakers are advised to frame strategies for investors to invest more in eco-friendly projects to curtail the ecological footprints in Pakistan. Minimizing the dependency of the transportation sector on fossil fuel, and increased use of energy-efficient appliances in the urban population would be beneficial to control the negative influence on ecological footprints in Pakistan.

On the nonlinear effects of energy consumption, economic growth, and tourism on carbon footprints in the USA.

The present paper implements the quantile autoregressive lagged (QARDL) approach of Cho et al. (2015) and the Granger causality in quantiles tests of Troster et al. (2018) to explore the nonlinear effects of US energy consumption, economic growth, and tourist arrivals on carbon dioxide (CO2) emission. Our results unveil the existence of substantial reversion to the long-run equilibrium connectedness between the variables of interest and CO2 emissions. The outcomes show that tourist arrivals decrease CO2 emissions in the long term for each quantile. In addition, we found that the output growth positively influences the carbon emissions at lower quantiles but negatively influences the carbon emissions at upper quantiles. Moreover, our findings of short-term dynamics validate an asymmetric short-run effect of tourist arrivals and economic growth on CO2 emissions in the US economy. Further results and their corresponding policy implications are discussed.