Abstract
This study contributes to the literature by estimating the interaction effects of economic growth and renewable energy consumption on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions with the inclusion of human capital. The interaction between economic growth and renewable energy consumption suggests how income level affects energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The study applies three-stage least square and ridge regression methods with Pakistani data from 1980 to 2014. The empirical findings show that the interaction effect of income and renewable energy contributes to CO2 emissions. Besides, trade openness also increases CO2 emissions, while the human capital mitigates CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the moderating effect of economic growth helps to form the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in Pakistan.
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The data can be provided upon request.
Abbreviations
- CO2 :
-
carbon dioxide
- 3SLS:
-
three-stage least square
- EKC:
-
environmental Kuznets curve
- GDP:
-
gross domestic product
- NRE:
-
non-renewable energy
- OECD:
-
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
- OLS:
-
ordinary least square
- RMSE:
-
root means square of error
- SEM:
-
simultaneous equation model
- USA:
-
United States of America
- WDI:
-
World Development Indicator
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Funding
The study is completed under National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (Reference No. 71625003), Yangtze River Distinguished Professor of MOE, National Key Research and Development Program of China (Reference No. 2016YFA0602504), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Reference No. 91746208, 71573016,71403021, 71521002, 71774014), National Social Sciences Foundation (Reference No.17ZDA065). Humanities and Social science Fund of Ministry of Education of China (Reference No.17YJC630145), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Reference No. 2017M620648). The authors are grateful to Kai Tang an associte professor at Guangdong university and foreign studies Guangzhou China and Yuantao Yang Phd Scholar at Beijing Institute and Technology for helping in editing and language correction.
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Mahmood, N., Wang, Z. & Hassan, S.T. Renewable energy, economic growth, human capital, and CO2 emission: an empirical analysis. Environ Sci Pollut Res 26, 20619–20630 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-05387-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-05387-5