Multifaceted natural resources and green energy transformation for sustainable industrial development

Abstract

Climate change is the most phenomenal challenge to humanity, and its roots are intervened with unsustainable industrialization, exercising overexploitation of natural resources. Therefore, the departure from non-renewable to renewables has become inevitable, though thought-provoking. In this respect, we explore how green energy transformation moderates the impacts of multifaceted natural resources on sustainable industrial development in the presence of other covariates involving technological progress, financial development, and economic progress. We compiled data from Group of Seven (G-7) members over the 1995−2018 period and applied panel quantile regression (PQREG) to capture the effects across varying levels of quantiles of sustainable industrial development. Results revealed a positive role of natural gas rents, while coal, forest, and total natural resource rents contributed adverse implications for sustainable industrial development. However, the green energy transformation proved to be the game changer because it not only directly induced sustainable industrial development improvement but also turned the unfavorable effects of coal, forest, and total natural resources into favorable ones by interacting with those multifaceted natural resources. Technological, financial, and economic progress supported sustainable industrial development in G-7 nations, particularly in members with existing middle and upper scales of sustainable industrial development. These findings are robust enough when subjected to different estimation tools. In light of these outcomes, the interaction between green energy transformation and natural resource policy is inevitably critical to attaining natural resource efficiency for sustainable industrial development. Therefore, it is imperative to establish a close policy coordination between advancing green energy technology and allocating natural resource revenue to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs), with a particular emphasis on SDG-7 and SDG-13.