Does Information and Communication Technology Trade Openness Matter for China’s Energy Transformation and Environmental Quality?

Energy transformation and environmental quality are now fundamental components of China’s economic development plans, which are being reorganized to ensure the dependability of the energy supply and protect environmental quality. Nonetheless, technical inefficiency is one of the most significant obstacles to achieving these overall objectives. Therefore, utilizing yearly data from 2000 to 2021 and the autoregressive distributed lag model, this article examines the implications of information and communication technology trade openness on China’s energy transformation and environmental quality. The findings indicate that information and communication technology trade openness has a favorable impact on environmental quality as a consequence of its negative impact on carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, the findings indicate that information and communication technology trade openness has a beneficial impact on energy transformation due to its positive impact on renewable energy consumption and negative impact on energy intensity. In conclusion, our findings demonstrate the necessity of eliminating obstacles to information and communication technology trade in China in terms of guaranteeing energy transformation and environmental quality. Therefore, it is optimal for China’s government to progressively reduce trade barriers in order to increase cross-border flows of information and communication technology products.