Adoption of renewable energy, natural resources with conversion information communication technologies and environmental mitigation: Evidence from G-7 countries

Abstract

The study signifies how environmental sustainability is influenced by renewable energy, information communication technology, gross domestic product, gross capital formation, urban population, and total natural resources of G-7 countries. This research approached annual data from 2000 to 2017 for analytical purposes and applied amalgamated econometric methods such as the first & second generation of econometric techniques, i.e., the Unit-root test, the Johansen cointegration method, the fully modified ordinary least square, the quantile regression, and the vector error correction model. The quantile regression and Fully- Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) results showed the increasing trend in renewable energy, information communication technology, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and Gross Capital Formation (GCF) deteriorates the quality of the environment with a growing trend in CO2 emission. The Vector Error Correction (VEC) model confirms the long and short-run relationship among variables, and findings are consistent with quantile regression and the FMOLS test The urban population and total natural resources have shown negative significance, positively affecting environmental sustainability in G-7 countries. The urban population with environmental awareness and natural resources with increasing revenue of individual country become the reason for environmental degradation mitigation. The government of G-7 countries, policymakers, environmentalists, and economists should concern with the mitigation of environmental deterioration with the development of the digital economy.