Trade Openness and Urbanization impact on Renewable and Non-Renewable Energy Consumption in China

Abstract This study investigates the trade openness and urbanization effect on renewable and non-renewable energy consumption in China for the period 1990-2018. We apply the Quantile Regression technique for the analysis, our results show that trade significantly increases the non-renewable energy consumption in all quintiles while partially increases renewable energy consumption. This shows that trade activities in production and export commodities heavily rely on non-renewable energy inputs instead of renewable energy inputs. Urbanization affects non-renewable energy consumption only in three quintiles, while its effect is insignificant in most of the quintiles. Similarly, Urbanization does not affect renewable energy consumption as in almost all quantiles the coefficients are statistically insignificant. This implies that urbanization is one of the determinant of energy consumption in China. The empirical findings of this study suggest some policy recommendations; first, the government needs to implement certain regulations while expanding trade to minimize the negative effect of non-renewable energy consumption; besides government should provide incentives to industrial units and traders for using renewable energy which may help to attain long term sustainable development goals.