An assessment on the new impetus of green energy development and its impact on climate change: a non-linear perspective

Abstract

Green energy is an important path to address global climate change.Evaluating the impact of new economic variables on green energy is a prerequisite for effectively promoting green energy growth. The existing literature has used linear methods to investigate green energy, ignoring the non-linear relationships between economic variables. In view of this, based on the 2005-2021 panel data of China's 30 provinces, this article adopts a data-driven non-parametric additive model to investigate the impact of new impetus on green energy development. The empirical results reveal that the impact of green finance on green energy development is more prominent in the later stage (a U-shaped impact). Fiscal decentralization also eexerts a positive U-shaped impact, meaning that in the later stage, expanding local fiscal autonomy has contributed to green energy growth. Similarly, the impact of oil prices on green energy shows a positive U-shaped pattern. In addition, the impact of foreign direct investment, environmental pressure, and fixed asset investment also exhibits obvious nonlinear characteristics. Furthermore, this article investigates the impact of