Exploring OECD SDGs Pilot City's 50-Year Time Series Data and Its Environmental Kuznets Curves

Can green growth policies help protect the environment while keeping the industry growing and infrastructure expanding? This study applies Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method on the 50-years’ time series data, from 1967 to 2015, of Kitakyushu City, Japan, and found mixed evidence for Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. The analyses of NO2, Ox, falling dust particle, and SOx highlight a trilemma among the growth of industrial firms, infrastructure development, and reducing air-quality degradation. Nevertheless, for CO emission per capita, its logarithm has a general declining trend when plotted against both average firm size growth and paved road area expansion. This finding sheds light on the possibility of developing a regulatory framework that can harmonize a low-carbon society with industrial and infrastructure development.