The time-varying relationship between CO2 emissions, heterogeneous energy consumption, and economic growth in China

As the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, China is curbing coal consumption and increasing natural gas and renewable energy consumption to curb the increase in carbon emissions. At the same time, China is still the largest developing country in the world. Therefore, it is very important to investigate the links between different types of energy consumption, economic growth, and carbon emissions. In this paper, impulse response functions and Granger causality test based on time-varying parameters vector autoregressive model are used to explore the time-varying relationship among CO2 emissions, economic growth, and heterogeneous energy consumption (coal, gas, oil, and renewable energy) in China over the period 1980–2019. The results show that reducing coal and oil consumption and increasing natural gas and renewable energy consumption will not significantly hinder economic growth. In addition, in the long run, reducing coal and oil consumption and increasing renewable energy consumption can significantly reduce carbon emissions. However, after 1998, increasing natural gas consumption will significantly increase carbon emissions. This study reveals the time-varying relationship between heterogeneous energy consumption, economic growth, and carbon emissions, and provides suggestions for China to achieve low-carbon economic growth.