Azka Amin, Abdullah Sultan Al Shammre
The growing climatic pressures induced by greenhouse gas emissions across BRICS economies emphasize the necessity of a comprehensive assessment of the key drivers of climate change. Thus, it is crucial to analyze the relationship between renewable energy consumption (REC), fossil fuel energy consumption (FFEC), green technology innovation (GTI), and institutional quality (IQ) on ecological footprint between 1990 and 2022 for the BRICS regions employing advanced panel econometric techniques, such as the Methods of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR), and cross-Sectional Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lags (CSARDL), which extends the traditional ARDL framework by incorporating cross-sectional averages to control for cross-sectional dependence. The outcomes reveal that REC, GTI, and IQ negatively affect EFP by reducing dependence on fossil fuels, advancing cleaner and more efficient manufacturing technologies, and strengthening environmental governance and regulatory enforcement, thereby performing a key role in improving environmental quality in the BRICS regions. In contrast, the FFEC shows a positive influence on environmental degradation by increasing greenhouse gas emissions, the over-exploitation of natural resources, and generating higher levels of air and water pollution, thereby intensifying ecological pressures. From a policy-oriented perspective, this research underscores the imperative for BRICS economies to accelerate the deployment of clean energy, strengthen institutional governance, and strategically scale up investments in green technological innovation to advance a more resilient and sustainable developmental trajectory.