Renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption, trade and CO2 emissions in high emitter countries: does the income level matter?

This study analyzes the effects of increased income and renewable energy on environmental quality, which has been ignored in the existing literature. An important contribution of this study is to analyze the role of renewable and nonrenewable energy in relation to the rising level of carbon emissions in the leading emitting countries. This research further examines the heterogeneous impacts of rising income levels and EKC investigation for CO2 emissions. The Kao cointegration, generalized method of moments (GMM), random effects, fixed effect (FE) regression models, and panel causality techniques are employed for panel data estimations. The empirical outcomes mention that an increase in income moderates the ratio of consumption of renewable energy to CO2 emissions. Increased income contributes more to the energy mix, which contributes to environmental pollution, through nonrenewable energy. This research reports policy-relevant critical masses beyond which an increase in income negatively affects the link between renewable energy and CO2 emissions.