Industrialization, energy demand and environmental pollution nexus in MINT economies. Does cleaner energy transition and environmental technology play a mitigating role?

Abstract

This paper looks into the industrialization-pollution nexus in the MINT economies, by analyzing the complex interlinkages of industrial development, energy demand, and environmental pollution, using yearly data from 1990 to 2023. Based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), the paper investigates the long-run link among key indicators using the Driscoll and Kraay Standard Errors (DKSE) estimations, CS-ARDL, FMOLS, and the DOLS for the robustness checks. Empirical results indicate that industrialization significantly contributes to environmental pollution, as a 1% upsurge in industry leads to a 0.475% upsurge in pollution. Significantly, environmental technology and transitions to cleaner energy sources are effective mitigation strategies, reducing pollution by 0.051% for each 1% implementation of either. Energy demand adds 0.362% to pollution for every 1% increase, while ECG has no direct significant effect. The firm model, the R-squared is 0.9597, confirmed the hypothesis of the EKC, which is that technological change can relieve environmental degradation. The study shows how sustainable development strategies adopt technological innovation in balancing economic growth with ecological sustainability.