Energy and social factor decomposition to identify drivers impeding sustainable environmental transition in emerging countries: SDGs-2030 progress assessment using LMDI analysis

The balance between human growth, economic prosperity, and the consumption of hydrocarbon energy factors has become a prerequisite for environmental sustainability. However, the complexities of these factors force researchers to work for more viable combinations of such a balance. Therefore, this study attempted to determine the factors driving environmental sustainability in leading populated economies. For this purpose, the Logarithmic Mean Division Index (LMDI) utilized to decompose critical factors such as activity, economy, real density, energy intensity, and suburban effects for the period 1999-2022. Both population and its consequences (economic activity) have been found to be the leading factors behind environmental fluctuations, and energy has a negative impact on hydrocarbon forms, while contributing positively to environmental sustainability with high efficiency and low intensity. Therefore, sustainable demographic and energy transitions can be leading pathways for environmental sustainability in developing economies.

Quantifying digital economy and green initiatives for carbon neutrality targets: a Kilian bias-adjusted bootstrap model evaluation of China economy

Digitalization has emerged as a new hope for low-carbon sustainable economic growth after its successful trial during the COVID-19 measures. Therefore, both developed and developing economies focus on digitalization to cope with carbon neutrality targets. Thus, this study attempted to generate a meaningful relationship between the digital economy and green energy, innovation, and environmental tax policy to capture the role of factors in acquiring carbon neutrality. For the abovementioned objectives, modern econometric methods, such as the Kilian bias-adjusted bootstrap, were adopted to evaluate the Chinese dataset between 1990 and 2021. The results indicate that the study factors play a significant role in acquiring carbon neutrality in the long-term Chinese economy. Furthermore, quantile autoregressive distributed lag model (QARDL) indicates that all the factors influence carbon neutrality in various quantiles. Consequently, the digital economy, green energy and innovation, and environmental taxes significantly assist in attaining carbon neutrality in the long term, and the ecological Kuznets curve prevails in the economy. Therefore, radical and wide-ranging policy implications are required in many areas including environmental restrictions, digital economy promotion, green and sustainable technologies, and clean energy sources.