Pathways to achieve carbon neutrality in emerging economies: Catalyzing the role of renewable energy, green growth, ICT, and political risk

Carbon neutrality has emerged as a pivotal strategy to mitigate climate change and reduce carbon emissions in response to the global climate crisis. This study investigates the influence of renewable energy use, green technology innovation, green growth, information and communication technology (ICT), and political risk on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the E−7 countries from 1995 to 2022. After confirming the significant cross-sectional dependency issue, this study employs the Driscoll-Kraay and cross-sectional autoregressive distributive lag (CS-ARDL) models to estimate the robust and reliable findings. The results confirm that both renewable energy consumption and green technological innovations significantly reduce CO2 emissions, whereas ICT exerts a negatively insignificant effect. On the contrary, green growth significantly amplifies CO2 emissions, while political risk positively affects CO2 emissions in the long-run. Consequently, this study suggests that policymakers should focus more on integrated strategies that promote renewable energy and green technology while managing green growth and minimizing the risk involved in the political system to achieve the targets of carbon neutrality in E−7 economies.