Endorsing sustainable development in BRICS: The role of technological innovation, renewable energy consumption, and natural resources in limiting carbon emission

Abstract

This research aimed to examine the complex interaction between technological innovation, renewable energy consumption, natural resources, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of BRICS (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries from 1990 to 2019, to accomplish the Paris Climate Conference (COP-21) objective of reducing CO2 emissions to promote environmental sustainability. The long-run empirical estimations derived from the CS-ARDL technique, which considered other estimation issues like cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity, indicated that technological innovation, renewable energy consumption, and natural resources increase environmental sustainability by limiting CO2 emissions, in the short-run and long-run. The technological innovation-related activities have a CO2 mitigating effect as shown by the negative coefficients which ranges between -0.05 and -0.14. This shows that they increase environmental sustainability and aid in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 13. Similarly, renewable energy and natural resources decrease CO2 emissions as shown by the coefficient of renewable energy (-0.31 to -0.81) and natural resources (-0.01 to 0.95); thereby increasing ecological quality by limiting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the interaction of technological innovation with natural resource rent and renewable energy consumption also aids in mitigating CO2 emissions and increases environmental health. Finally, panel causality analysis revealed a significant causality from all explanatory variables to CO2 emissions. Based on the results, significant policy suggestions are provided, such as improving energy effectiveness, investing in energy technologies, and increasing renewable energy consumption to stimulate technological innovation to achieve the target of a net-zero‑carbon economy.