“…According to the EKC hypothesis, a rise in real GDP per capita initially leads to an increase in CO 2 emissions in the first stages of economic growth due to the consumption of fossil fuels. Eventually, this leads to a decrease in CO 2 emissions after a certain turning point due to the adoption of eco-friendly technologies, policies, and cleaner energy demand (Dinda 2004 ; Soytas and Sari 2009 ; Aslan et al 2018 ; Destek and Sarkodie, 2019a ; Dogru et al 2019 ; Erdogan and Acaravci 2019 ; Kisswani et al 2019 ; Isik et al 2019a , b ; Destek et al, 2020a ; Destek and Sinha, 2020b ; Ongan et al 2020 ; Ongan et al 2022 , 2023 ; Ahmad et al, 2023 , 2022 , 2021a , b , c ; Alvarado et al 2021a , b , c , 2022a ; Işık et al 2020a , 2021a , b , 2022 ; Çetin et al, 2023 ; Jabeen et el., 2023 ). Therefore, the critical question is how countries can reach this turning point with a lower real GDP per capita and earlier.…”