Renewable Energy Consumption: Does It Matter for China’s Sustainable Development?

Abstract

In China, one of the most pressing issues that have to be addressed is how to best manage the link between energy consumption and sustainable development. Given this context, the goal of the current article is to investigate the effect of renewable energy consumption on sustainable development. Using provincial panel data from 2005 to 2020 and the province and year fixed effects model for an empirical study, we discover that renewable energy consumption has a favorable impact on sustainable development. Similarly, the findings suggest the influence of non-renewable energy consumption on sustainable development is weaker than that of renewable energy consumption. Moreover, the heterogeneity of the influence of renewable energy consumption and nonrenewable energy consumption on sustainable development in eastern, central, and western China has been demonstrated as well. Notably, the two-stage least squares approach and generalized system method of moments are utilized to examine the robustness of this issue, and the reliability and robustness of the conclusions presented in this study are also confirmed. To sum up, the results in this article provide more evidence that the use of energy is an important contributor to achieving sustainable development in China and realizing the target set for sustainable development in 2030.