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The excessive growth of carbon emissions (CO2E) from industrial energy use not only exacerbates global warming and severely curbs the sustainable development of the economy and society. As a high energy-consuming sector second only to the fossil energy division, the power and heavy division, China's chemical industry should have received more attention for its CO2E. However, there are limited literatures on energy CO2E in China's chemical sector at present. Based on this fact, this current paper uses the energy utilization approach, the input–output analysis approach, and the extended structural decomposition method to evaluate the energy-related CO2E of China's chemical sector from 2007 to 2017. (1) China's chemical sector energy-related CO2E showed a trend of first growth and then a slow decline, demonstrating that the rapid growth of China's chemical sector energy-related CO2E has been effectively controlled; However, it should be noted that the chemical industry is still dominated by high-CO2E energy-related CO2E at the current stage. (2) Input structure and energy intensity effects have a reduced influence on the growth of energy-related CO2E in China's chemical sector. This is due to upgrading energy use technology and optimizing the generalized technology progress rate in the chemical sector. (3) Energy structure and final demand effects have encouraged the growth of the chemical sector's energy-related CO2E. It shows that the industrial system's demand for chemical products is constantly expanding, and the chemical products still have the characteristics of high carbonization. Also, the chemical sector's supply-side energy utilization structure has not been significantly enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of the current study is to analyze the nexus between public debt, renewable electricity, economic growth, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in emerging economies between 1990 and 2020. The augmented mean group (AMG), fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), and dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) models have been applied to analyze the long-run estimation. The empirical evidence demonstrates that public debt, renewable electricity reduces CO2 emissions. Furthermore, an N-shaped relationship has been identified between per capita CO2 emissions and per capita GDP in emerging nations. Also, the result reveals a bidirectional causal relationship between public debt and economic growth, CO2 emissions and economic growth, public debt and CO2 emissions, and renewable electricity and economic growth. The current study recommends promoting the renewable energy transition, elevating renewable electricity generation capacities, and ensuring greener economic growth by emitting carbon dioxide emissions across emerging countries. The government across each region could incorporate taxes and other incentives to encourage entrepreneurs and citizens to produce equipment that reduces carbon intensity and is ecologically friendly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study constructs an economic growth model that includes natural resource endowments to theoretically explore the paradox of “resource gospel” and “resource curse.” Based on the theoretical analysis, the influence of natural resources on green total factor productivity is analyzed empirically through an econometric model using Chinese urban panel data from 2010 to 2019. The theoretical analysis shows that the impact of natural resource endowment on green total factor productivity is indecisive. The empirical results show that natural resource endowments significantly lessen urban green total factor efficiency, and the results remain robust after addressing for endogeneity issues and robustness tests. However, this effect is significantly heterogeneous depending on the city level and science and education level; for example, the “resource curse” effect is more pronounced in non‐central cities and cities with average education and science level. Simultaneously, the mechanism analysis shows that natural resource endowment reduces urban total factor productivity by inhibiting innovation and introducing choices in the technological progress approach. Therefore, the research findings bring empirical evidence to promote reforms in natural resource allocation and provide theoretical support for encouraging green total factor productivity in resource‐based cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]