Undoubtedly, financial inclusion (FIN) contributes to economic development by enabling individuals and businesses, particularly small and medium enterprises, to access financial services. Financial inclusion may also have environmental implications; however, limited studies have looked into the nexus between financial inclusion and environmental quality. Also, the possible impacts of technological innovation and green openness remain unexplored in this nexus. In this context, this article probes the relationship between financial inclusion, technological innovation, green openness, and CO2 emissions in BRICS countries while controlling for economic growth and energy consumption. Using the panel times series data from 2004 to 2018, this study uses advanced econometric techniques for empirical analysis robust to cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity. The empirical results unveiled that FIN contributes to environmental degradation in BRICS countries. In contrast, technological innovation and green openness pose mitigating effects on emissions, thus promoting environmental sustainability. Environmental degradation is evidenced to enhance due to rising economic growth and energy utilization. Financial inclusion, technological innovation, and green openness Granger cause CO2 emissions, but not the other way around. Further, technological innovation, green openness, and financial inclusion Granger cause each other. Based on the empirical results, this study recommends that BRICS countries should promote technological innovation, green openness, and at the same time, integrate financial inclusion with environmental policies to achieve climate-related goals.

Green finance is considered a viable way to promote sustainable economic development and can effectively enhance enterprise development by alleviating financing constraints and eliminating liquidity risk. The Chinese government has formulated many policies to promote sustainable and enterprise development, including the green financial reform policy, but the implementation of the green financial reform policy is still unclear. In this context, this study employs the difference in difference (DID) method to evaluate the impact of green financial reform policy on enterprise development by using the data of 33,539 Chinese enterprises from 2007 to 2021. The empirical findings indicate that the green finance pilot policy posed a significant impact on the enterprises’ development level. The green financial reform policy accelerates enterprise development by reducing enterprise financing constraints, increasing the number of government subsidies received by enterprises, and improving corporate social responsibility. In addition, the green financial policy reform has varying impacts on various types of enterprises. The results further indicate that it has promoted advancing state-owned enterprises and low-polluting enterprises’ development toward high quality. In contrast, it has not played a similar role for non-state-owned enterprises and high-pollution enterprises. Based on the results, important policy implications are suggested to promote enterprises’ sustainable and high-quality development.

The world economy continues to witness a steady rise in carbon emissions, which makes it challenging to fulfill the terms of the Paris agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In this context, countries worldwide enact environmental regulations to curtail environmental pollution to promote sustainable development. However, the importance of environmental regulations has not been fully validated in the previous literature. In addition, the concurrent roles of capital formation, green innovation, and renewability cannot be overlooked. Against this backdrop, this study selects data from G7 countries from 1994 to 2019 to explore the effect of environmental regulations, capital formation, green innovation, and renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions. In order to achieve the above research objectives, we employ the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MM-QR) for empirical analysis. The results reveal that capital formation significantly enhances environmental quality by reducing CO2 emissions across all quantiles (10th–90th). Environmental regulations show a significant and negative impact on CO2 emission mainly at the middle and higher emissions quantiles, while the effect is insignificant at lower quantiles (10th). Moreover, green innovation and renewable energy consumption mitigate CO2 emissions across all quantiles (10th–90th), while economic growth deteriorates environmental quality in G7 countries. The panel granger causality results indicate the unidirectional causality running from capital formation, environmental regulations, and renewable energy towards CO2 emissions, which implies that any policy related to these variables will Granger cause CO2 emissions but not the other way round. Based on the findings, important policy implications are proposed to promote sustainable development in G7 countries.

In recent years, the debate on environmental issues has become a hot topic. Fiscal decentralization is believed to be a crucial driver of environmental sustainability. However, the discussion on the effect of fiscal decentralization (FD) on environmental sustainability has not reached a unanimous conclusion. In this study, we inspect the effect of fiscal decentralization, economic development, technological innovation, economic globalization, and energy use on environmental quality in eight Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member countries. In addition, we analyze the mechanisms through which fiscal decentralization influences the ecological footprint (EF) through the channels of technological innovation and economic growth. Using the STIRPAT framework, this study employed the CS-ARDL method for short-run and long-run analyses that deal with slope heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The empirical results show that fiscal decentralization and technological innovation mitigate ecological footprint, while economic development, energy consumption, and urbanization negatively affect environmental quality. However, economic globalization is not related to the EF in the sample economies. The results further reveal that FD enhances environmental quality through the channel of technological innovation, while it does not affect the EF through the channel of economic growth. Finally, it is recommended to make a reasoned division between the rights and responsibilities of local government and central government in environmental pollution management, and optimize the environmental system. At the same time, policymakers should encourage technological innovation to reduce the adverse impacts of economic development and energy consumption on the environment.

As an important factor affecting economic and social development, energy poverty (EP) has received widespread concern, and many countries have actively proposed policies to eliminate energy poverty. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the current situation of energy poverty in China, explore the factors that affect energy poverty, find sustainable and effective approaches to alleviate energy poverty, and provide empirical evidence for eliminating energy poverty. This research investigates the effect of fiscal decentralization (FD), industrial structure upgrading (ISU), energy efficiency (EE), and technological innovation (TI), as well as urbanization (URB) on energy poverty using a balanced dataset of 30 provinces in China from 2004 to 2017. The empirical outcomes revealed that fiscal decentralization, industrial upgrading, energy efficiency, and technological innovation significantly reduce energy poverty. Moreover, urbanization is positively and significantly correlated with energy poverty. The outcomes further revealed that fiscal decentralization significantly increases the residents’ access to clean energy and drives energy management agencies and infrastructure. In addition, the heterogeneity analysis results indicate that the effect of fiscal decentralization in reducing energy poverty is greater in regions with high economic development. Finally, mediation analysis denotes that fiscal decentralization indirectly reduces energy poverty by promoting technological innovation and energy efficiency. Finally, based on the results, policy suggestions for eradicating energy poverty are proposed from the perspective of implementing targeted energy alleviation policies reasonably dividing the rights and responsibilities of local and central governments and encouraging scientific and technological innovation.