Renewable Energy Product Competitiveness: Evidence from China and the Belt and Road Countries

Abstract

With the further deepening of the “Belt and Road” initiative known as BRI, China and the BRI countries have made remarkable progress in renewable energy production and trade. In order to systematically evaluate the international competitiveness of renewable energy products of these countries, the current study has built a new multi-dimensional evaluation index to estimate the international competitive edge of renewable energy products exported from these countries, by abandoning the traditional methods for measuring trade competitiveness and adopting the projection pursuit (PP), TOPSIS model and the improved weighting methodology. The results demonstrate that the overall international competitiveness of renewable energy products from the BRI countries is weak, with dramatic differences in different countries in the evolution trends; the factors influencing the international competitiveness in the BRI countries are significantly different and; China's renewable energy products are competitive, and their competitiveness is growing rapidly in the past decade. Finally, this study has put forward corresponding policy implications.