Linking natural resource abundance and green growth: The role of energy transition

A better understanding of the impact of natural resource abundance on green growth in the context of the energy transition could serve to break the resource curse and avoid pollution transfer, thereby promoting green and sustainable development. To this end, this study combines the Slack-Based Measure (SBM) method and the Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index to measure the green growth in 77 countries from 2002 to 2019, and examines the impact of natural resource abundance on green growth. This study also investigates the moderating role of energy transition, heterogeneity analysis, and asymmetry analysis. The results show that (i) the average green growth levels for most countries surpassed 1, indicating green growth is the trend. (ii) The impact of natural resource abundance on green growth is negative, indicating that the natural resource abundance hinders the improvement of green growth. Moreover, this negative impact is more prominent in countries with lower natural resource abundance and lower green growth. (iii) Energy transition can effectively alleviate the negative impact of natural resource abundance on green growth. Besides, this mitigation effect is greater in high-resource-abundance countries than in low-resource-abundance countries. Finally, this study highlights several policy implications to break the resource curse and achieve green growth. •Aimed to a better understanding of the impact of natural resource abundance on green growth.•The Slack-Based Measure and Global Malmquist-Luenberger (SBM-GML) index and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) regression were developed.•Most countries were in a state of green growth from 2002 to 2019.•The richness of natural resources inhibits the improvement of green growth.•Renewable energy transition can alleviate the negative impact of natural resource abundance on green growth.