Modelling the contribution of green technologies, renewable energy, economic complexity, and human capital in environmental sustainability: Evidence from BRICS countries

Abstract

Green technological developments and investments are often observed as effective tools for the sustainability of carbon counteraction since they progress energy efficiency and unsoiled productivity. To do this, the main objective of this study is to inspect the effect of green technologies, economic complexity, renewable energy consumption, and human capital on the ecological footprint in the case of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries over the span of 1990–2020. Accordingly, this study applied novel and unconventional panel methods that provide reliable and robust estimated findings under slope heterogeneity and cross-dependency issues. The estimated results from cross-sectional autoregressive distributive lag (CS-ARDL) presents that the influence of green technologies, human capital, and renewable energy significantly protects the environment. On the other hand, economic complexity damages the environment in the long run. Furthermore, the evidence confirms that the interactive role of renewable energy consumption is also beneficial to protect the environment. Besides, the interactive role of green technologies and renewable energy consumption significantly protect the environment in the BRICS region. From a policy perspective, this study advocates that it is crucial to accelerate green technological innovations in BRICS economies, including the regulatory policies encouraging an incessant upsurge in the share of green technologies, renewable energy consumption, and human capital into environmental technological progress.