Pathway to Sustainable Economic Growth : Linkage Among Energy Consumption, Carbon Emissions, Climate Change and Technological Innovation

Energy consumption brought about by economic growth has aggravated carbon emissions and climate change, and technological innovation is an important measure for energy conservation and emission reduction to mitigate climate change. Using the data of Asian and European countries from 1996 to 2020, this paper adopts the dynamic GMM model to examine the impact of climate change and technological innovation on economic growth, energy consumption and carbon emissions. The empirical results show that the impact of technological innovation on economic growth has significant regional heterogeneity and time-varying effects. Specifically, compared with Asian countries, especially in the long run, technological innovation plays a more significant role in promoting sustainable economic growth in European countries. Moreover, climate change and technological innovation have spatial linkage and dependence. While bringing economic growth to Asian countries, the technological transfer of traditional industries in European countries have further aggravated the energy consumption and carbon emissions of Asian countries, resulting in abnormal climate change and frequent extreme weather, which is of great significance for Asian countries to implement targeted technological innovation strategies to improve energy efficiency and mitigate climate change. Finally, the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions also further confirmed the EKC hypothesis