Do climate change risks affect the systemic risk between the stocks of clean energy, electric vehicles, and critical minerals? Analysis under changing market conditions

This paper analyzes the impact of climate change risks—specifically from natural disasters, global warming, international summits, and U.S. climate policy—on the return connectedness (systemic risk) of a network consisting of the stocks of clean energy, electric vehicles, and critical minerals in bear, bull, and normal market conditions. Employing a quantile vector autoregression (QVAR) approach, we find significant temporal variations in the total connectedness index, with notable spikes during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. Total connectedness is higher but less variable under bear and bull market conditions. Concerns about global warming has a positive and significant impact on systemic risk during bear and normal market conditions while international summits have a negative impact during normal market conditions. However, the effects of these climate change risks are small in magnitude. Economic policy uncertainty and stock market volatility have the largest positive impacts on systemic risk under most market conditions. Our results reveal a nonlinear (inverted U-shaped) relationship between variable importance and systemic risk quantile, showing that the impact on connectedness is largest in magnitude under normal market conditions.