Revolution of nuclear energy efficiency, economic complexity, air transportation and industrial improvement on environmental footprint cost: A novel dynamic simulation approach

Abstract

The expansion of a country's ecological footprint generates resources for economic development. China's import bill and carbon footprint can be reduced by investing in green transportation and energy technologies. A sustainable environment depends on the cessation of climate change; the current study investigates nuclear energy efficiency, economic complexity, air transportation, and industrial improvement for reducing environmental footprint. Using data spanning the years 1983–2016, the dynamic autoregressive distributed lag simulation method has demonstrated the short- and long-term variability in the impact of regressors on the ecological footprint. The study findings revealed that economic complexity in China had been found to have a statistically significant impact on the country's ecological footprint. Moreover, the industrial improvement process is helpful for the ecological footprint in China. In the short term, air travel has a negative impact on the ecological footprint, but this effect diminishes over time. Additionally, energy innovation is negative and substantial both in the short and long run, thus demonstrating its positive role in reducing the ecological footprint. Policy implications can be extracted from a wide range of issues, including economic complexity, industrial improvement, air transportation, energy innovation, and ecological impact to achieve sustainable goals.