Pathways to ecological resilience: exploring green energy and finance for sustainable development

The risk of global warming and the difficulties brought on by climate change are mostly due to the production and use of energy, which puts the world at a crossroads. However, increasing worldwide greenhouse gas emissions over the past few decades have made climate-related development funding necessary, and the worldwide goal is to achieve ecological sustainability while reducing environmental degradation. As a result, economies seeking power for sustainable growth must innovate. As a direct response to the growing threat that is posed by global warming, academics and politicians are looking more closely at the way economic growth and environmental protection interact with one another. Still, it is unclear how environmental pollution may be significantly decreased globally. Hence, the study aim is to analyze the influence of green technology innovation (GTI), economic growth (EG), and foreign direct investment (FDI) on sustainable development (SD) by using renewable energy consumption (REC) as a mediator and the moderating influence of government initiatives (GI) of 126 nations from 2001–2019. In this regard, the study employed second-generation techniques of unit root tests of CIPS and CADF, Westerlund cointegration test, and Hayes PROCESS macro. The results indicate that the native natural ecosystem used renewable energy sources. Despite this, environmental performance in numerous countries is declining because of growing energy use and FDI. The study findings imply that countries could improve environmental performance by developing and implementing more targeted policies and green finance.