Within the paradigm of sustainable development goals, countries in the European Union (EU) have accepted the green deal policy, which aims to decarbonize economic growth by 2050 ^[1][2][1,2]. Thus, the EU will become the first region with carbon-free economic development. However, although countries in the EU provide coherent policies, the EU has disparities and gaps in reducing carbon emissions and consequently achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) ^[3][4][5][3,4,5].

It should be noted that the transition to green economic growth requires green innovations and technologies that reduce environmental degradation, particularly carbon emissions. Scholars ^{[6][7][8][9][10]}[11,12,13,14,15] confirm that green innovations have a statistically significant impact on declining carbon dioxide emissions and boost the achievement of SDGs. At the same time, past studies ^[11][16] emphasize that countries with strong institutions and effective implementation of sustainable development principles have higher capabilities for extending green innovations. In addition, new innovations and technologies require additional resources (financial, labor, etc.). Prior studies ^[12][13][17,18] have highlighted the crucial role of greenfield investment in boosting green innovations and technologies. Adeel-Farooq et al. ^[14][19] confirmed that greenfield investment negatively affects environmental performance in Asia countries. At the same time, economic growth positively affects environmental performance. However, Neto et al. ^[15][20] concludes that economic growth boosts the greenfield investment, however the reverse effect is not confirmed. At the same time, they showed that greenfield investment could have indirect effects on countries economic growth in developed and developing countries. Bayar Y. ^[16][21] also showed that greenfield investment promotes the economic growth in EU countries. At the same time, the countries have disparities in attracting external and allocating internal green investment ^[17][22]. Consequently, it could restrict the green economic growth of the country. On the other hand, countries with a high level of green economic growth are more attractive for investors. In this case, it is relevant to indicate if the greenfield investment has the direct effect on green economic growth. It should be noted that the scientific community has not accepted universal approaches for assessing green economic growth: (1) approaches based on the world indexes SDG Index, Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index, and Global Green Economy Index ^{[18][19][20][21]}[23,24,25,26]; (2) approaches based on green GDP ^[22][23][27,28]; and (3) approaches based on desirable and undesirable outcomes ^[24][25][29,30]. 

2. Assessment of Green Economic Growth

The results of the theoretical background on green economic growth show that most authors analyze it as a synergistic effect on simultaneous economic and ecological development ^{[6][10][23][24][25][26][27][28]}[11,15,28,29,30,31,32,33]. Scholars ^[26][31] use SO₂, wastewater and smoke–dust emissions to measure green economic growth. At the same time, they confirm that innovations could boost green economic growth. The study ^[27][32] applies energy efficiency and stochastic frontier techniques to estimate green economic growth. Based on these findings, they conclude that reforms in Chinese energy sectors were effective and caused an increase in energy efficiency, which boosted green economic growth. Dizon K. E and Norona M. ^[29][34] confirm that a country’s green economic growth depends on SMEs’ green development. Thus, using the structural equation model, they define green economic growth as the latent variable with the following constructs: intra- and intergenerational equity; equity and inclusiveness; job creation and economic diversification; environmental integrity; efficiency; and green technological advancement ^[29][34]. Considering the findings, they conclude that environmental integrity has the highest statistically significant load on green economic growth. At the same time, scholars ^[29][34] emphasize that initialization plays the core role in providing green economic growth. Gao X. ^[30][35] applies spatial clustering and blockchain techniques to identify the abnormal and pic points of green economic growth of the country, and based on the findings, the scholarly cluster region depends on green economic growth. It should be noted that green economic growth is analyzed within the productivity of green factors and the efficiency of green economies. A similar approach to estimate green economic growth is used by ^[28][33]. Thus, scholars apply the green total productivity factor as a long-term reference-point to achieve sustainable development goals. Guo S. and Diao Y. ^[31][36] estimate the green economic growth of regions of the Yangtze River economic belt. They construct an integrated index that consists of economic quality, green growth, green industry, and green benefits. Based on the entropy method, scholars conclude that the Pan-Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration has the highest value of green economic growth, which is caused by coherent ecological and economic policies. Kuang Y. and Lin B. ^[32][37] applied the quasi-difference–in-difference method for the assessment of green economic growth. Scholars ^[32][33][37,38] used an integrated index constructed from energy efficiency, economic productivity, and emissions reduction. A previous study ^[34][39] developed an index to estimate green economic growth that merges three dimensions: environmental efficiency (wastewater, SO₂ and industrial smoke emissions), resource efficiency (water and electricity consumption) and governance capacity (scale of greening, recycling of domestic waste, and cost for eliminating industrial pollution). Contrary to the abovementioned research, scholars ^[35][40] calculate green economic growth based not only on economic (GDP, GDP per capita, and share of tertiary industry in GDP) and ecological (green urban area, forest area, and green park) indicators but also on social (population growth rate, unemployment rate, and income per capita) indicators.

3. Greenfield Investment and Green Economic Growth

The results of the analysis of the theoretical landscape of green economic growth show that researchers have identified a vast range of indicators that catalyze green economic growth: fiscal decentralization ^[36][37][41,42]; digitalization and artificial intelligence ^{[38][39][40][41][42]}[43,44,45,46,47]; good governance ^[43][48]; green innovations ^{[44][45][46][47][48]}[49,50,51,52,53]; environmental regulation ^{[49][50][51][52]}[54,55,56,57]; green finance ^{[53][54][55][56]}[58,59,60,61]; renewable energy ^{[57][58][59][60][61][62][63]}[62,63,64,65,66,67,68]; green consciousness, education and awareness ^{[64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]}[69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76]; and investment and business climate ^{[72][73][74][75][76][77]}[77,78,79,80,81,82]. Scholars ^[28][33] applied FMOLS and DOLS techniques to empirically justify the statistically significant impact of innovations, green policies, government efficacy, and renewable energy consumption on green economic growth. In addition, they highlight that the implementation of green innovations requires greenfield investment. Studies ^[36][37][41,42] show that in China, fiscal decentralization could differentially impact green economic growth depending on the efficacy of environmental regulations and green innovation implementation. At the same time, researchers ^[38][43] confirmed that Big Data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence could enhance green economic growth in China. However, they confirm that the government should actively develop digital infrastructure and improve the country’s digital capabilities. Prior studies ^[42][43][47][47,48,52] prove that digital technologies positively affect enhancing green economic growth. However, the innovation effect on green economic growth is not statistically significant in China. Furthermore, green economic growth is positively conducive to innovation in the long term, and this effect is not confirmed in the long term. Controversial conclusions have been confirmed by researchers ^[78][83]. Considering the results of two-step GMM techniques, they conclude that R&D expenditures positively promote green economic growth in the long term, and this impact does not conform in the short term. Green finance is a core determinant of greenhouse gas emissions, which is the core dimension of green economic growth ^{[54][55][58][76]}[59,60,63,81] Studies ^{[54][55][58][76]}[59,60,63,81] confirm that green finance promotes innovation and technologies that allow the decline of environmental degradation, a safe economic growth rate and the achievement of green development. The pool of researchers ^[69][71][77][74,76,82] proves the positive statistically significant effect of renewable energies on green economic growth. However, scholars ^[78][83] confirm the inverted N-shaped relationship between renewable energies and green economic growth for 27 EU members from 2008 to 2017. Thus, based on the results of the SBM-GML technique, researchers show that the growth of renewable energy in the interval of 0.67%–10.87% is conducive to green economic growth; in other cases (less than 0.675 or higher than 10.87%), it causes a decline ^[78][83]. In addition, they use the following control variables: population density, government expenditure and unemployment rate. Based on the meta-analysis of the investigation on green finance and green economic growth, Desalegn G. and Tangl A. ^[79][84] theoretically justify that green investment promotes a country’s green economic growth. The authors of ^[80][85] applied the ARDL model to check the long- and short-term effects of green investment on green economic growth. Considering the findings for Asian countries, scholars indicate that green investment positively impacts green economic growth in the long term. It should be emphasized that the accepted agreement between China and the EU on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment ^[80][85] allows for achieving the common goals of decoupling carbon emissions and intensifying green economic growth. This is also confirmed by previous studies ^[81][82][83][86,87,88]. Furthermore, scholars ^[83][88] underline that green investment could be effective if the government provides effective environmental policies and planning and control mechanisms for environmental investments, expenditure, and projects. Past studies ^{[84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93]}[89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98] have analyzed the impact of green investment at the local or company level. Based on empirical findings, scholars ^{[84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93]}[89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98] show that green investment is conducive to a company’s green performance, which is the core element for a country’s green economic growth.