Renewable Energy: A Curse or Blessing-International Evidence

The development of renewable energy has effectively promoted the process of reaching global carbon neutrality. However, the academic community has not reached a consensus on whether the development of renewable energy will inhibit economic growth. The crux of the debate centers around whether renewable energy paradigms ignore differences in the structure of factor endowments across countries. The panel data of 125 countries from 1990 to 2021 were used to perform group regression for countries with different factor endowment structures. The results show that the renewable energy curse of developed countries becomes stronger and weaker with economic development; the renewable energy curse in developing countries is growing with economic growth; and the economic development of countries with poor natural resources is more vulnerable to the negative impact of renewable energy development. The group regression results of different development stages of renewable energy show that the negative impact of renewable energy development on economic development is not significant in the early stage, but that it has significant impacts in the growth and maturity stage. The mechanism test found that the development of renewable energy affected changes in trade structure and inhibited economic growth.