How do technological innovation and renewables shape environmental quality advancement in emerging economies: An exploration of the E7 bloc?

Abstract

Emissions from several emerging economies currently constitute the largest contributions to the global carbon emissions levels thereby triggering concerns on the prospects for achieving global environmental sustainability-related goals (SGDs-13 and 11). Thus, this research examines whether technological innovation and renewables pose any moderating roles in the environmental quality advancements of rapidly emerging economies using the bloc of the emerging seven (E7) economies. The empirical framework of the study capitalizes on the strengths of the novel CS-ARDL technique in addressing the pitfalls of cross-sectional dependence (CD) from common factors that marred the understudied panel observations for the bloc between 1992 and 2018. The long-run estimations provide crucial insights into the environmental sustainability dynamics of the E7 bloc. First, the observed impacts of the rapid economic expansion alongside the fast-growing energy consumption were significantly detrimental to environmental sustainability over the period of study (1992– 2018). Second, the duo of technological innovations and renewables place the E7 on an environmental sustainability path as they significantly dampen the CO2 emissions level in the bloc. Third, the inverted U-shape growth-emission conjecture of the EKC was confirmed for these groups of emerging economies within the innovationenvironment nexus exploration. Fourthly, although both innovations and renewable energy consumption enhance sustainability, however, the magnitude of their desirable environmental impacts is quite low compared to the observed impacts of the pollution damages created by the observed energy consumption-driven economic growth expansion in the bloc over the years. Overall, the results are indicative that the E7 needs to do more in terms of investments in environmental-related technological innovations and the expansion of renewables in overall energy portfolios to harness the inherent benefits of the duo to position the bloc on a sustainability path. More recommendations for environmental sustainability enhancement from technological innovation and renewable perspectives were further enunciated for the E7 bloc in the main text.