Natural gas consumption-economic output and environmental sustainability target in China: an N-shaped hypothesis inference

On one divide, energy types have been linked with the varying degree of environmental damage. Another perspective argued on the severity of the damaged base on per capita and/or population consumption pattern. As such, this study investigates the nexus of per capita natural gas consumption-carbon dioxide emissions and per capita income-carbon dioxide emissions in the case of the People of the Republic of China. This study objectively expanded to illustrate whether the N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis holds in the case of China or not. The employed autoregressive distributed lag bound testing approach incorporated additional explanatory variables (urbanization) within the N-shaped EKC hypothesis over the period 1971-2018. Importantly, the results show an evidence of inverted N-shaped EKC relationship. In addition, the study posits a positive relationship between natural gas consumption and carbon dioxide emissions and between urbanization and carbon dioxide emissions. Thus, the study proposes renewable energy development and decongestion of the urban centers as a means of controlling global warming.