CO 2 emissions mitigation among energy importers and energy exporters along BRI 2 countries. What role do renewable energy and nuclear energy play

26 Background: In achieving the goal of sustainable development (Goal 13), United Nations has 27 related global warming to greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. Emissions of carbon dioxide, 28 are known to be the biggest contributor to global warming. Hence this study disaggregates energy 29 consumption that is Nuclear energy, renewable energy and fossil fuel consumption and 30 investigates their impact on CO 2 emissions along the Belt and Road Initiative. 31 Methods: This paper determined the cross-sectional dependency and utilized second generation 32 panel unit root test for precise estimation. Westerlund cointegration test was used to determine the 33 long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables. Lastly the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) 34 estimation approach was applied to investigate the long and short run output elasticities between 35 the variables. 36 Results: The results indicates that; for energy importers, CO 2 emissions has a significant positive 37 correlation with Fossil fuel and nuclear energy, while renewable energy has a significant negative 38 correlation with CO 2 emissions. For energy exporting countries, a significant positive two-way 39 relationship amidst Fossil fuel and CO 2 emissions, and a significant negative one-way causal 40 relationship from nuclear energy and renewable energy unto CO 2 emissions. 41 Conclusion: The results clearly show that in all panel grouping renewable energy contribute 42 negatively on CO 2 emissions, thus more implant of renewable system is need along the belt and 43 road initiative. These recent methodologies employed and findings revealed that in a pollution 44 reduction tender, causal affiliations are affected in a tender to reduce emissions along with long 45 and short-term estimated effects among employed variables by the energy groupings of Belt and 46 Road countries. 47


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Economic cooperation, Individual countries as well the United Nations (UN), in other to 55 achieve the sustainable development goals (goal 13 1 ) have linked global warming to greenhouse 56 gas (GHG) emissions in recent years. The emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) is believed as the 57 main contributor to global warming among other GHG (Liu et al. 2016). For the past two decades, 58 developed and developing countries, have employed for their economic growth purposes fossil 59 energy intensively in almost all economic sectors such as manufacturing industry, agriculture and 60 transport (Schandl et al. 2016). This therefore has headed to CO2 emissions in almost all parts of 61 the world. Since energy consumption is a major contributor to economic growth and as well the   1 Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and it impacts. Levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other ambient greenhouse gases rose to new levels in 2019. Each nation on each continent is affected by climate change. It disrupts national economies, and it impacts lives. Climate patterns change, sea levels rise and climate events become more extreme. The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, aims to reinforce the global response to the climate change challenge by holding a global temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels this century. The Agreement also seeks to improve countries' ability to cope with climate change impacts through adequate a new technology system, financial flows and an improved capacity building process.
Renewable energy usage, such as geothermal energy, solar energy, wind power, biofuels and  On the other side, the use of nuclear power is regarded as the alternative energy source to allot 84 the high oil prices and reduce dependence on other countries for energy needs (Hewitt and Collier 85 2018). Oil and gas usage show that the world's energy demand is growing fast, reserves could run 86 out in generations to come, alternative resources are scarce and security of energy supplies is vital. 87 In response to these challenges, considering long-term development and environmental strategy, In as much as the relationship between CO2 emissions, renewable energy and nuclear energy 97 have been studied and reported, analysis on countries being energy importers and exporters along 98 the BRI remain unclear. Responding to this deficiency, this study propose the relevance in 99 analyzing the energy classifications of countries along the BRI. By exploring links between these 100 variables, researchers may be able to help determine whether renewable energy or nuclear energy 101 is the best in mitigating CO2 emissions in these groups. If renewable energy or nuclear energy 102 helps mitigate emissions in these groups, then pursuing more renewable energy or the usage of 103 nuclear energy will have beneficial effects on mitigating CO2 emissions. Specific questions in 104 regards to this study are as follows: first, from the perspective of the whole process, does the 105 consumption of renewable energy and nuclear energy contribute to CO2 emissions reduction? 106 Secondly, if so, which energy source contributes more? Fossil fuels, an important additive variable 107 was included since they are known as the main producer of CO2. Labor is also added as an 108 additional variable, because through economic cooperation, local and foreign industries will hire 109 more workers, which will increase energy consumption in the long run. Since energy consumption 110 is related to CO2 emissions, we consider human capital. Table 1  The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents data and classification 114 methodology in section 3, section 4 introduces estimation of results and discussion, lastly

Data and classification
119 Some countries were omitted in this study as a result of missing data, thus annual data covering 120 1990-2018 for 40 BRI countries were utilized. The characteristics of the variables in this study are 121 presented in Table 2.

INSERT TABLE 2 123
Since energy is an important input to production, energy trade is critical to the economic growth 124 of countries whose energy reserves cannot meet their energy needs. Likewise energy cooperation 125 based on free trade is an important part of BRI. Thus due to the lack of conventional energy 126 reserves and increasing reliance on energy imports, it is necessary to divide these countries into 127 energy importers and energy exporters (Table 3). This offers the belt and road initiative a way to  The relationships amidst nuclear energy, renewable energy, labor force, fossil fuels, economic 137 growth and CO2 emissions can be estimated as a function following a similar study done by Saud   The Pesaran CD test also can be computed as: Where is the coofficients of correlation obtained from the residuals;

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The Friedman's test can be calculated by; Where ̂ is the sample estimate of the rank correlation coefficient of the residuals. The and 168 share a mutual characteristics; they involve the sum of the correlation coefficients of the 169 residual matrix, not the sum of the correlation squared used in the test. The free's test can also 170 be computed as; Where 2 been the sample estimate of the rank correlation coefficient of the residuals squared.  175 Considering the fact that CSD errors was characterized in the panel data, unit roots test that 176 considers CSD must be taking into account to obtain reliable estimates. In responds to this, a 177 second generation panel root test such as Pesaran (2007) cross-sectionally dependent augmented 178 dickey fuller (CADF) test was adopted. The regression for this test is given as:

Panel unit root test
Where ̅ = 1 ∑ =1 and it is included in the equation as a proxy for the effects for unobserved  In estimating the short and long run estimates for the variables, the pooled mean group was 227 employed. PMG allowed the short-term parameters to be different between groups and the long- 268    All variables are transformed into natural logarithm form to interpret coefficients into 309 elasticities, the time frame were due to the data available. Table 4

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In general, for normal distribution using kurtosis and skewness, the normal value of skewness 322 and kurtosis is "3" and "0" respectively.
where ̂ is the sample mean value           this study were I(0) but turn to I(1). Since stationarity has been inferred, it was necessary to find  All data used in this study are publicly available online. The information on the sources of data is 603 provided in Table 2 The authors declare that they have no competing interests.       Note: "b" significance of correlation is at 5%. The 5% level of statistical significance provides evidence that the 12 probability of rejecting or accepting the null hypothesis is a type 1 error.