Nexus between economic growth, renewable energy and climate vulnerability: A global perspective using the EKC framework

Economic activities contribute an important role in greenhouse gas emissions, which may cause life-threatening events such as floods, soil erosion, and forest fires. Moreover, electricity production contributes 25 % to the emission of greenhouse gases. The emanation of greenhouse gases and their antagonistic impact focuses the effort of researchers toward climate change vulnerability. The current study tries to evaluate the association between climate change vulnerability, technological innovation, renewable energy, per capita income, and globalization for the case of high and low climate vulnerable economies for the period of 1995–2022 by using panel quantile regression (PQR) which may resolve the problem of heterogeneity and conditional heterogeneity. The square form of per capita income has also been integrated as an independent variable to testify to the environment Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. The estimated findings elucidate that per capita income has an exponential negative effect for the case of high vulnerable economies and inverted U-shaped influence among low vulnerable countries. Moreover, renewable energy consumption may decrease climate vulnerability among low vulnerable economies while increasing it among high vulnerable countries. States may adopt a wide-ranging approach that covers several aspects of vulnerability and sustainability.