A study of the impact of energy transition on sustainable economic and environmental development: a global case

In the context of climate change mitigation and carbon neutrality, countries around the world are advocating the energy structure transition. This chapter empirically examines the potential impact of renewable energy development on GDP per capita, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and green total factor productivity (GTFP) by constructing a dynamic panel model and employing a System Generalized Method of Moments (Sys-GMM) with a balanced panel dataset containing 166 countries worldwide from 2001 to 2019. The main findings of this chapter are as follows. (1) Renewable energy development can significantly contribute to the increase of economic development level, and it significantly contributes to economic growth in both low-income and high-income countries , but the contribution is greater in low-income countries. (2) Renewable energy development can significantly curb CO2 emissions. The suppressive effect of renewable energy development on CO2 emissions is only present in high-income countries, and the effect in low-income countries is not significant. (3) Renewable energy development has a significant contribution to green economic growth, and renewable energy development on green economic growth is only found in high-income countries; while in low-income countries, renewable energy development has a depressing effect on local green economic growth. We provide some policy implications based on the empirical results.