Sustainable energy security through a multidimensional lens: The role of green ICT, education, financial stability, and stringent environmental policies

Energy plays a crucial role in driving global economic growth. As a result, global energy demand has risen sharply, leading to growing concerns about energy security. Despite its significance, few studies have explored the determinants of energy security risk. This analysis aims to fill this gap by examining the impact of green ICT, education, financial stability, and environmental policy stringency on energy security risk. To estimate the short and long-run estimates, this study employs the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) model. The long-run estimates reveal that green information and communications technology (ICT), education, financial stability, energy innovation, and gross domestic product (GDP) cause the energy security risk to fall, whereas environmental policy stringency escalates the energy security risk. In the short-run, the results are meaningless for most variables except for the environmental policy stringency, which boosts the energy security risks, and the GDP, which mitigates the energy security risks. These results suggest that any policy designed to mitigate energy security risks should be based on integrating green ICT, financial stability, and education. However, environmental policy stringency should also be used with great caution, as it may escalate energy security risks.