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How China is fostering sustainable growth: the interplay of green investment and production-based emission

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Abstract

To mitigate environmental problems and to achieve sustainability, China is striving to transition to low-carbon urban economies. Among several significant steps, the country has made remarkable success in controlling the emissions from transportation, buildings, and energy by shutting down or relocating several polluting industries. This study contributes to the issue of sustainable growth debate using time series data from China for the period 1998–2017 and empirically examines the effects of green investment and renewable energy consumption on production-based carbon emissions for China. The strength of this study is that it tested some new variables such as production-based carbon emissions and green investment. Using autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) cointegration technique, we found that production-based emission and its determinants move together in the long run. The study found that green investment and renewable energy consumption are both helpful in controlling production-based carbon emissions, while trade openness increases production-based carbon emissions. Hence, green investment and renewable energy consumption contribute to the achievement of sustainable growth. Moreover, based on a robustness check, human capital, financial development, and environment-specific technological innovation are found to be helpful in curbing production-based carbon emissions. Our study recommends financial technology (fin-tech), green investment, and public-private partnership investment in renewable energy to mitigate the effect of production-based carbon emissions.

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Acknowledgments

We would also like to thank the editor and three anonymous referees for their highly constructive suggestions, which helped in improving earlier versions of this paper.

Funding

This research has been supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education (Grant No. 18YJC790164), the Shandong Social Science Planning Project (Grant Nos. 18CGLJ15, 18CCXJ08), and the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 17BJY104).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business Administration, Shandong Women’s University, Jinan, 250300, People’s Republic of China

    Lei Wang

  2. School of Economics, Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266000, Shandong Province, People’s Republic of China

    Chi-Wei Su

  3. Department of Economics & Development Studies, University of Swat, Saidu Sharif, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 19130, Pakistan

    Shahid Ali

  4. Department of Accounting and Information, Ling Tung University, Taichung City, Taiwan

    Hsu-Ling Chang

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  1. Lei Wang
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Wang, L., Su, CW., Ali, S. et al. How China is fostering sustainable growth: the interplay of green investment and production-based emission. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 39607–39618 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-09933-4

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