Green energy as a new determinant of green growth in China: The role of green technological innovation

Media attention, green technology innovation and industrial enterprises’ sustainable development: The moderating effect of environmental regulation

Digital finance provides a premises guarantee for green technology innovation, and effective environmental regulation helps to achieve green and sustainable development. This article selects Chinese urban panel data from 2011 to 2019 to explore the impact mechanism of the influence of digital finance and environmental regulation on the innovation capacity of green science and technology. It is found that extensive financing channels and the strong information-matching ability of digital finance have a significant promoting effect on local green science and technology innovation. Moreover, government environmental regulation not only facilitates the development of green technology innovation locally and in nearby regions, but also strengthens the utility of digital finance in driving green science and technology innovation. Further research found that the influence of digital finance and environmental regulation on the ability of green science and technology innovation has regional heterogeneity, and only digital finance in Central China can promote green science and technology innovation in both local and adjacent areas. Therefore, the government should continue to promote the development of digital finance, optimize environmental regulations by increasing environmental protection subsidies and creating a green innovation environment, and further stimulate willingness to innovate green technologies. At the same time, it is also important to note the coordinated development and governance with neighboring regional governments.

The rapid industrialization and economic growth of South Asia have improved living standards but also exacerbated CO 2 emissions, intensifying the region's climate vulnerabilities. While existing literature has extensively examined green growth strategies in developed economies, few studies explore how green technological innovation, finance, and trade policies interact to shape emissions in South Asia, a region with distinct developmental challenges and high climate risks. This study investigates whether green energy adoption, technological innovation, and sustainable investments can decouple economic growth from emissions in South Asian economies from 1995 to 2022. Using second‐generation panel econometrics—accounting for cross‐sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity—along with AMG and CCEMG estimators, we assess long‐term relationships, supplemented by causal analysis, CuP‐FM and CuP‐BC for robustness. The results demonstrate that green technological innovation, green energy, and green finance significantly reduce CO 2 emissions, while trade liberalization increases them, likely due to carbon‐intensive export structures and weak environmental regulations, a critical finding for regional policymaking. Furthermore, green investment mitigates emissions but requires stronger institutional support to align with COP28 mandates and SDGs (7, 9, 11–13). This study contributes to the literature by addressing the gap in South Asia–specific green growth analyses, integrating COP28 resolutions into empirical policy recommendations, and demonstrating the underutilized potential of green finance and innovation in achieving carbon neutrality. The findings urge policymakers to prioritize sustainable infrastructure, reform trade policies to reduce emissions leakage, and scale targeted green investments to reconcile economic and environmental goals.

Threshold effect of green credit on firms’ green technology innovation: Is environmental information disclosure important?

International trade levels can change the relationship between resource endowments and green economic growth. Therefore, this study tested the resource curse hypothesis from the perspective of green growth in China using provincial-level panel data for 2005–2017. Energy conservation and environmental improvement were considered under green growth to further analyze the regional mechanism of the resource curse. A panel threshold model was used to identify the impact of import and export threshold effects on the transformation of this mechanism. The resource curse hypothesis was found to be valid nationwide; it hindered green economic growth mainly by impeding energy conservation and curbing environmental improvement. In terms of regional differences in green growth, resource endowment had a positive impact on the eastern region, a negative impact on the central region, and no effect on the western region. When the levels of import and export trade exceeded the threshold values, the resource curse effect was enhanced by reducing energy conservation and weakened by promoting environmental improvement, respectively. Therefore, the Chinese government should establish a more reasonable import and export trade structure, promote changes to the energy structure and green technological innovation, and reduce the negative impact of resource endowment on green growth.

In the context of economic transformation and ecological civilization construction, breaking financing constraints and carrying out green technology innovation has become an urgent task for enterprises to achieve green and sustainable development in China. As a financing method of the supply chain, can credit sales effectively promote enterprises’ green technology innovation? This paper constructs an evolutionary game model between upstream and downstream enterprises. Firstly, the interaction between credit sales and green technology innovation is explored through an evolutionary equilibrium analysis. Secondly, the influencing factors of credit sales and green technology innovation decisions are analyzed through a numerical simulation. The study found that: (1) Under the condition of evolutionary equilibrium, the credit sales of upstream enterprises and the green technology innovation of downstream enterprises can form a virtuous circle mode of “financing—income generation—benefit sharing”. That is, a win-win situation can be achieved through the internal circulation of the supply chain. (2) Profit distribution is one of the key issues in the game between upstream and downstream enterprises. The willingness of upstream enterprises to provide credit sales and downstream enterprises to carry out green technology innovation is positively related to the benefits they enjoy from green technology innovation. (3) The supervision cost is an obstacle for upstream enterprises’ credit sales. A practical and inexpensive account recovery guarantee mechanism is an effective way to improve the willingness of upstream enterprises to provide credit sales. (4) The government’s green subsidy is beneficial to the whole supply chain’s “credit sales—green technology innovation” mode, which not only directly stimulates downstream enterprises’ green technology innovation but also stimulates upstream enterprises’ credit sales through benefit sharing. This paper enriches the relevant research on green technology innovation of the supply chain and provides a reference for green technology innovation and financing interaction between upstream and downstream enterprises.

Following the recommendations of COP28 and Sustainable Development Goal -13 (Climate Action), the present study examines the role of financial depth and green technology innovation in carbon neutrality and climate change. This study measures the relationship between green innovation, technological innovation, ICT, financial depth, economic growth, carbon emission, and ecological footprint from 1990-2021 in the USA. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model examines the relationship between the above-mentioned variables and their impacts on each other. Results reveal that green innovation, technological innovation, ICT, and financial depth significantly negatively impact ecological footprint and carbon emissions in both the short and long run. In contrast, economic growth positively impacts carbon emissions and ecological footprint. Green and financial innovation-centric policies are suggested to the USA to attain net zero emission and SDG-13.

To achieve sustainability, economies tend to rely on green financing strategies and green technologies. Although green finance and green technological innovation have their own influence, when combined, they form an effective catalyst for environmental advancement and sustainable development. This endeavor explores the complementary role of green finance and technological innovation in advancing sustainable development within the G7 economies. Previous studies have primarily focused on the direct or linear effects of these factors on sustainability outcomes. This study considers the distributional dynamics to estimate the model of sustainable development. Using a balanced panel dataset covering the period 1990–2022, we employ the quantile regression framework to capture the heterogeneous effects of variables across different levels of sustainable development. The empirical findings reveal a strong complementarity between green finance and technological innovation, demonstrating that their interaction significantly enhances sustainable development outcomes. These results underscore the critical role of adequate financial support in facilitating the effective adoption and diffusion of green technologies. Among the control variables, natural resource rents and environmental policy stringency are found to exert a negative influence on sustainable development, while energy productivity contributes positively. In terms of policy implications, findings suggest that the allocation of more financial resources towards green technological innovation is important for sustainable development.

The unreasonable economic development model of human beings has caused the environmental pollution problem to become increasingly serious. In order to achieve a positive relationship and interaction between environmental regulation, research and development (R&D) investment, and green technology innovation, and effectively solve the “strange circle” problem between high-quality economic development and environmental pollution in China and even the world, this paper takes the panel data of industrial enterprises above designated size in Chinese mainland 31 provinces from 2009 to 2019 as a research sample. The comprehensive index of R&D investment and green technology innovation was established by the entropy method, and the panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model was constructed from the dynamic endogenous perspective, and the dynamic interaction and regional heterogeneity between environmental regulation, R&D investment, and green technology innovation were empirically analyzed by using impulse response function and variance decomposition. We obtain the following findings: (1) Environmental regulation has a two-way interaction relationship with R&D investment and green technology innovation, and R&D investment has a promotion effect on the “green degree” of technological innovation, but its role is still weak and has lagging characteristics. (2) There is significant regional heterogeneity in the dynamic responses of the eastern, central and western parts of China. (3) In the long run, environmental regulation has a “negative crowding out effect” on R&D investment in the central region, and the phenomenon of “central collapse” still exists but will gradually weaken. Environmental regulation has a “positive innovation compensation effect” on green technology innovation. Green technology innovation and R&D investment have an obvious “Pareto improvement” effect on environmental regulation, especially in the eastern region. The conclusions of this study help to clarify the dynamic interaction between environmental regulation, R&D investment, and green technology innovation, further improve environmental regulatory policies and green technology innovation R&D decision-making, and provide an effective way to achieve green and sustainable development in China and other parts of the world.

This research delves into firms' green innovation response to climate policy uncertainty (CPU). We distinguish green management innovation from green technological innovation and investigate the moderating effect of belonging to a high‐energy‐consuming industry and investors' climate attention. Based on Chinese A‐share listed firms in 2008–2022, we reveal a positive influence of CPU on green management innovation but a more limited effect on green technological innovation. However, firms' green technological innovation response is found to be more positive in the high‐energy‐consuming industry, and increased climate attention by investors strengthens CPU's facilitating effect on both green management and green technological innovation. In terms of longer‐term outcomes, we reveal that firms' participation in green technological innovation prompted by CPU significantly bolsters firms' competitive advantage. Our research offers novel insights into the inconsistent debate relationship between CPU and green innovation and influencing contextual factors.

In the era of green economic development, green finance serves as a crucial catalyst for green technological innovation, and both may significantly drive the upgrading of industrial structures. This study combines green finance, green technological innovation, and industrial structure into a research framework, analyzing data from 29 Chinese provinces (2003–2020) to empirically assess their impacts on China’s industrial structure using a two-way fixed-effects model. The results show the following: first, green finance and green technological innovation can significantly promote the upgrading of China’s industrial structure directly and synergistically, a finding corroborated by various robustness tests. Secondly, heterogeneity analysis reveals that there is a “path-dependency effect” in the development of green finance and technology innovation: in areas with higher population density, more developed technological markets, and lower fiscal pressure, the synergistic promotion of the upgrading of industrial structure is stronger. Thirdly, further research indicates that green finance and technology innovation impact the upgrading of industrial structure variably under command-and-control, market-incentive, and voluntary environmental-regulation tools. The most effective policy is the voluntary regulation tool, which involves higher levels of public participation. This study offers valuable insights for fostering green technology innovation, refining environmental policies, and enhancing the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure.

Nexus between green financial development, green technological innovation and environmental regulation in China

In the context of today’s global environmental challenges, manufacturing enterprises are gradually taking green technology innovation as a strategy to enhance sustainable development ability. This study discusses the application of hybrid intelligent technology in promoting green technology innovation decision-making in manufacturing enterprises. Through data preprocessing and model construction, it is found that energy consumption, emissions, standard compliance, environmental quality and market response are closely related to the green technology innovation score of enterprises. The results show that efficient energy management and active compliance with environmental standards have a significant impact on improving the environmental performance and technological innovation of enterprises. The market’s positive response to green technology has significantly promoted the rapid development and application of the technology. This study not only provides manufacturing enterprises with strategy and decision support for green technology innovation, but also provides policy makers with insights for promoting sustainable development. Through in-depth analysis, this paper emphasizes the importance and effectiveness of comprehensive application of hybrid intelligent technology in the process of green technology promotion.

The paper examines the impact of clean energy and green technology innovation on carbon neutrality in both developed and developing countries from 2000 to 2024. Advanced panel econometric techniques including cross-sectional dependence, second-generation unit-root tests, and the Dynamic Common Correlated Effects (DCCE) Technique is applied to estimate the both short-run and long-run relationships among clean energy use, technological innovation, economic activity, and carbon emissions. Paper used CO2 proxy of carbon neutrality which is dependent variable, similarly clean energy, Green technology innovation, GDP and Trade Openness as the independent variable The findings exposed that clean energy adoption and green technological innovation significantly accelerate carbon-neutral ways in both groups; however, the efficiency is notably stronger in developed countries due to higher technological willingness, efficient policy frameworks, and greater innovation capacity. But the developing countries measured slower but positive transition, due to limited financing, lower innovation diffusion, and structural energy dependencies. Generally, the paper highlighted that adoption of clean energy and green technology innovation are essential strategies for achieving the global carbon neutrality, but different policy significances is required for developed and developing economies.

Does the coupling of digital and green technology innovation matter for carbon emissions?