Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals through technological innovation: juxtaposing the economic and environmental effects of financial development and energy use

Abstract

The BRICS comprise of group of emerging market economies which are committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals agenda of the United Nations by the end of the year 2030. In this regard, it is critically important for these nations to sustain their annual rise in their economic growth rates while simultaneously declining the rate of discharge of carbon dioxide emissions. Against this backdrop, this study aims to investigate how financial development, greater primary energy consumption, and technological innovation affect the prospects of the BRICS nations in achieving economic and environmental sustainability. Considering the period from 1990 to 2020 and utilizing methods that are robust to working with cross-sectionally dependent, heterogeneous, and endogenous panel data, the key analytical findings derived in this study reveal that higher levels of financial development, primary energy consumption, and technological innovation boost the per capita economic growth rates of the BRICS nations. Besides, technological innovation also moderates the financial development-economic growth and the primary energy consumption-economic growth nexuses by jointly boosting economic growth rates with these two macroeconomic variables. On the other hand, financial development and higher primary energy consumption are seen to boost the annual per capita carbon dioxide emission growth in these emerging nations, while technological innovation is observed to do the opposite. Furthermore, technological innovation is witnessed to moderate the nexus between energy use and economic growth to further reduce the emission growth rate in the BRICS nations. Accordingly, a set of policies are recommended to the concerned governments in order to enable the BRICS nations to attain the Sustainable Development Goals agenda.

Keywords: CO2 emissions; Financial development; Sustainable Development Goals; Sustainable economic growth; Sustainable environmental quality; Technological innovation.