Renewable and non-renewable energy policy simulations for abating emissions in a complex economy: Evidence from the novel dynamic ARDL

According to the Economic Complexity Index, Japan was the number 1 most complex economy in the world. In addition to complexity, Japan pledges to reduce emissions by boosting cleaner energy sources. This study simulates two policies to highlight a path for Japan in achieving this ambitious energy and environmental target. The novel dynamic autoregressive distribution lag (ARDL) model and Kernel-based regularized least squares (KRLS) are adopted over panel data from 1970 to 2018. Empirical evidence from the ARDL and dynamic ARDL models shows that CO2 emissions have a significant long-term relationship with GDP per capita, renewable energy, and economic complexity index while air transport is significant in the short run. Putting it more elaborately, a unit increase in GDP per capita increase the emission by 0.84%–0.96% in the long run and 0.46%–0.48% in the short run. As regards renewable energy, a unit increase in it decrease the carbon emission by 0.07% and 0.04% in the long-run and short-run respectively. Also, an increase in the economic index diminished the emission by 0.81% in the long run. Moreover, economic complexity moderates the role of GDP in environmental degradation as it also has a significant impact on carbon emission.