“…Early studies focused on unveiling the eff ect of traditional economic indicators (e.g., investments, trade openness, foreign direct investment, urbanization) on the environment (Nurgazina et al, 2022). The second wave of the research has investigated the eff ect of input-based variables (e.g., electricity, renewable energy consumption and non-renewable energy consumption) on environmental performance (Pata and Çağlar, 2021;Ulussever et al, 2023;Adebayo et al, 2023;Akhayere et al, 2023;Kartal, 2023;Pata, Erdoğan, Ozkan, 2023;Ullah et al, 2023;Wang, Chandavuth, et al, 2023). Besides, most of the empirical research has adopted the EKC hypothesis (Shahbaz and Sinha, 2019;.…”