Comparative Analysis of the Relationship between Renewable Energy Adoption, Fossil Fuel Energy Consumption, and CO<sub>2</sub> Emission in the United States and China

This study addresses the critical issue of carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) emissions, focusing on understanding the intricate interplay between four major variables Gross Domestic Product per capita (GDPC), Renewal Energy (RE), Fossil Fuel energy consumption (FF), and Patent application (PTS). This research is crucial due to the emerging negative impacts of climate change, which will create a disastrous future for human beings. It focuses on three decades from 1990 to 2020 and compares the results between the United States and China. Underlying long-run relationships and unit root characteristics of the variables are analyzed with the help of unit root tests, cointegration analysis, descriptive statistics, and an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The analysis shows that the examined variables are strongly related and significantly impact CO<sub>2</sub> emission. For example, GDPC and PTS have a positive relationship with CO<sub>2</sub> emissions, Whereas wider use of RE has a negative effect on emissions. The findings, therefore, emphasize the need for country-specific emission reduction policies because of the differences between the Chinese and the American systems. In conclusion, this study detects that the interaction between economic growth and technology and energy utilization are major influential factors that need to be incorporated in developing efficient policies to minimize the emission of CO<sub>2</sub>. It is helpful for policymakers and those interested in environmental conservation as it stresses that combating climate change requires differentiated approaches in distinct countries. This research moves beyond extant literature by adopting a novel comparative methodology to analyze the shifts in the process of CO<sub>2</sub> emission in two of the world’s largest economies. Hence, it captures the interaction of GDPC, RE adoption, FF consumption, and PTS on CO<sub>2</sub> emissions, which is crucial for formulating environmental policies and future emission control strategies.