Linking Resource Richness, Digital Economy, and Clean Energy to Ecological Footprint and Load Capacity Factor in Emerging Markets

The wave of digitalization has spread across all countries in the world, with lasting environmental consequences in the medium and long term. On the flip side, the environmental impact of resource richness, including its exploitation and consumption, has been an age‐long debate among policymakers, particularly in emerging markets. As such, this study examines the effect of natural resources (NR), digital economy, and clean energy consumption on the ecological footprint (EF) and load capacity factor (LCF) in emerging countries from 2000 to 2022. The current study enriches the literature by assessing the impact of different dimensions of the digital economy on both the demand side (EF) and supply side (LCF) of environmental quality. The results from the augment mean group estimator suggest that NR and economic growth increase the EF across all the models. However, all the indicators of the digital economy, except ICT goods exports, alleviate the EF. The same set of variables that reduce the EF also increase the LCF for the selected countries. Renewable energy consumption (REC) has heterogeneous effects on EF and LCF, suggesting that clean energy is not adequately consumed in emerging countries. In addition, the direction of causality flows from NR to EF. A bidirectional causality exists between REC and EF, economic growth and EF, NR and EF, and between REC and LCF. Based on the findings, it is recommended that emerging countries develop more digital technologies, intensify the process of digital promotion, and mobilize the benefits of energy transition for a clean and sustainable environment.