ABSTRACT

The EKC literature has ignored the importance of natural resources on environmental degradation. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the impact of renewable energy consumption and the abundance of natural resources on CO2 emissions for a panel of 82 countries by using quantile regressions. Empirical results show that renewable energy consumption reduces CO2 emissions and its effect increases in higher quantiles. The impact on carbon emissions of natural resource abundance is negative at lower quantiles but positive at medium and higher quantiles. Also, the validity of the EKC hypothesis is confirmed for all quantiles, and an increase in trade openness and urbanization increases environmental degradation in lower and middle quantile levels; however, these determinants have negative impacts on carbon emissions at higher quantiles. Policy implications related to this outcome are further discussed in the study.

摘要

EKC 文献忽略了自然资源对环境退化的重要性。因此，本文旨在通过分位数回归研究82个国家/地区的小组中可再生能源消耗和自然资源的丰富度对CO2排放的影响。实证结果表明，可再生能源消耗减少了 CO2 排放，其效果在更高的分位数上增加。自然资源丰度对碳排放的影响在较低的分位数上是负面的，但在中分位数和较高的分位数上是积极的。此外，EKC 假设的有效性在所有分位数上都得到了证实，贸易开放度和城市化程度的提高会加剧中低分位数水平的环境退化；然而，这些决定因素对较高分位数的碳排放有负面影响。