A Modeling And Empirical Study About The Influence Of Energy Economic Structure On Carbon Emissions In BRICS Countries

The BRICS countries represent the five largest emerging economies in the world.The past few decades have witnessed the rapid economic development of the BRICS countries.Meanwhile,they are also facing severe environmental threats caused by large amounts of CO₂ emissions.According to the Environmental Kuznets Curve?EKC?theory,optimizing the energy consumption structure and economic structure are crucial ways to ease the conflict between economic development and environmental pollution.Recently,the governments of BRICS countries have attached great importance to renewable energy consumption and actively promoted the development of the service industry,in order to achieve the decoupling of economic development from carbon emissions.Therefore,it is of strategic significance to explore the contribution of renewable energy consumption and service industry development to carbon emission reduction.However,few researchers analyze this issue in depth.In addition,most of the existing studies fail to fully consider cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity problems.In view of this,we use Common Correlated Effects Mean Group?CCEMG?method and Bootstrap panel granger causality test which are based on cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity assumptions to explore the overall influences of renewable energy consumption and service development on carbon emissions in BRICS countries more accurately.In order to ensure the robustness of the estimation results and explore the impacts of cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity on the accuracy of estimation results,this paper also uses a series of panel data analysis methods that do not consider cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity simultaneously.In addition,this paper further uses a series of time series data analysis methods to clarify the impacts of renewable energy consumption and service industry development on carbon emissions in each nation,and to obtain referenced policy recommendations through comparative analysis of results in each nation.The results suggest that,first of all,increasing the share of clean energy consumption in the energy consumption structure is an effective measure to reduce CO₂ emissions overall.The results of Brazil,Russia,China,and India confirm this view.While,the effect of this measure in South Africa is not obvious.Secondly,the rising contribution of service industry to economic growth in BRICS countries poses some threats to CO₂emissions reduction on the whole,although the results have some differences across BRICS countries.In Brazil,South Africa and China,further expansion of the service industry will increase CO₂ emissions.Whereas,the results from Russia and India show that the development of the service industry reduces CO₂ emissions.Under the current severe situation of carbon emissions reduction in BRICS countries,this study has important practical and theoretical significance.On the one hand,this paper fully considers the influences of cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity on the accuracy of the estimation results which enriches the research results of advanced panel data analysis methods.On the other hand,this paper clarifies the impacts of renewable energy consumption and service industry development on carbon emissions in BRICS countries.Further,we obtain referenced policy recommendations through comparative analysis of the results in each nation.This provides a path for the decoupling of the economic development from carbon emissions in BRICS countries.