**5. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations**

This paper studied the relationships between environmental regulation, resource endowment, and sustainable growth by using a fixed-effects model and system GMM method, and the research sample is the panel data of new energy enterprises from 2010 to 2019. This paper focuses on the impact of environmental regulation on the sustainable growth of Chinese renewable energy enterprises, and introduced resource endowment to examine its moderating effects. After empirical analysis, we obtained the following conclusions: economical environmental regulations, legal environmental regulations, and supervised environmental regulations are positively associated with sustainable growth. Compared with legal environmental regulations and supervised environmental regulations, economic environmental regulations have the greatest impact on sustainable growth. The resource endowment is positively associated with sustainable growth, especially for nonstate-owned renewable energy enterprises, and resource endowment plays a moderating role between environmental regulations and sustainable growth. Furthermore, resource endowment has the greatest moderating effect on the relationship between economical environmental regulations and sustainable growth. According to the above conclusion, we propose the following suggestions.

The first one is based on the effectiveness of economic environment regulations. Economic environmental regulations intuitively discourage the consumption of traditional energy sources and promote the development of renewable energy from an economic perspective. Governments can implement flexible and effective economic policies that take into account local conditions, such as increasing taxes on traditional energy sources while providing policy subsidies and tax incentives for renewable energy. By reducing the financial pressure on renewable energy companies, new energy innovations can be promoted to achieve sustainable growth.

Secondly, based on the effectiveness of legal environmental regulations. The use of traditional energy sources inevitably leads to the consumption of environmental resources and environmental pollution. For government policies, on the one hand, through the establishment of a sound legal environmental regulation system, the use of traditional energy sources and the treatment and discharge of pollution can be regulated in order to curb the consumption of natural resources and mitigate environmental pollution. On the other hand, legal environmental regulations are also conducive to the management of renewable energies, as they regulate the research and development and production of renewable energies and promote the sustainable growth of new energy enterprises.

Thirdly, based on the effectiveness of supervisory environmental regulations. Strict and effective regulation, based on sound laws and regulations, can ensure that legal provisions are implemented. For example, strict monitoring of energy consumption and the treatment and discharge of pollutants by energy companies can effectively force traditional energy companies to transform and promote technological progress in the field of new energy. Thus, strengthening supervisory environmental regulation is beneficial to the sustainable growth of renewable energy companies.

Fourth, based on the effectiveness of resource endowment. Environmental endowments are inherently conducive to sustainable growth, so governments should actively guide energy companies to develop and build local resources with local characteristics, and sufficient environmental resources to ensure sustainable growth. However, given the 'resource curse' effect, local energy development should not be overly dependent on the benefits of environmental endowments and should focus on the long-term benefits of renewable energy. In addition, as resource endowments have a negative impact on the influence of environmental regulations, as resource endowments increase, the role of environmental regulation in sustainable growth decreases. Therefore, government departments should be fully aware of the contradictions between resource endowments and environmental regulation, and the link between resource endowment and environmental regulation should be better coordinated. For example, for traditional energy sources, environmental regulations should be strengthened to avoid the "resource curse" brought about by overly strong resource endowments, while for renewable energy enterprises, resource endowments can be moderately strengthened through the creation of a favorable financing environment and research environment to promote sustainable growth. Whether starting from an environmental regulatory perspective or a resource endowment perspective, the final goal is to curb traditional energy sources and promote renewable energy development so as to achieve sustainable growth. The government should be fully aware that technological development is the basic driver of sustainable growth, reasonably integrating the local environmental and social resources, enhancing resource-use efficiency, and encouraging scientific and technological research and development so as to achieve sustainable growth.

**Author Contributions:** Methodology, H.Z.; Writing—original draft, H.H.C.; Data curation, K.L.; Writing—review & editing, Z.R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

#### **References**

