Technical innovation, renewable energy consumption, and CO2 emissions in the USA: a cross-quantile approach.

This study investigates whether technological innovation and the consumption of renewable energy tend to reduce the emissions of CO2 in the USA by analyzing datasets from January 2010 to May 2022. The main contribution to this study is that we applied a cross-quantile approach, which possesses several strengths compared to other methods used for directional predictability. The empirical results of this research can be concluded as three points: (1) both the consumption of renewable energy and technological innovation significantly and negatively impacted the emissions of CO2 in the short run (i.e., 1 month) across high quantiles, which gradually diminished over time (i.e., 3 months, 12 months, and 24 months), implying that technological innovation and the consumption of renewable energy possess a short-lived effect on CO2 emissions, respectively; (2) this relationship remains significant for causal links spanning 1 and 3 months and 1 and 2 years when the consumption of renewable energy and technological innovation are treated as control variables respectively; (3) a recursive cross-quantilogram was constructed to support further our findings, which showed that the consumption of renewable energy and technological innovation tend to negatively impact the emissions of CO2 across all quantiles. These results imply that an increase in the consumption of renewable energy and technological innovation can curb CO2 emissions in the USA; these effects tend to be more lasting when technological innovation and the consumption of renewable energy are combined. Therefore, future policies focused on curbing the emissions of CO2 should pay attention to the combined effect, which is the promotion of technological innovation and the exploitation of renewable energy sources in the USA.

Revisiting R&D intensity and CO2 emissions link in the USA using time varying granger causality test: 1870∼2020.

R&D intensity, per capita GDP, and per capita CO2 emissions links in the USA over the period of 1870-2020 reflects the evolution of the economic development and technology for the environment benefit. Using Time varying Granger causality, the empirical results indicate both causal links between R&D intensity and per capita CO2 emissions and between per capita GDP and per capita CO2 emissions are time varying. In addition, R&D intensity significantly affects per capita CO2 emissions since 1975, and the per capita GDP significantly influences per capita CO2 emissions since 1978. That is, these findings not only in supportive of the EKC theory, but further disentangle the subtly linkages for the R&D intensity and CO2 emissions and the per capita GDP and CO2 emissions. Finally, the policy implication is that launch the new technical innovation and increase in R&D investment to maintain its sustainable economic growth are the best government strategy to reduce CO2 emissions in the USA.