Sustainable Transitions: Navigating Green Technologies, Clean Energy, Economic Growth, and Human Capital for a Greener Future

Sustainable transitions are essential for balancing economic growth with environmental preservation. Ecological sustainability, measured through environmental footprints (ECV), serves as a strategic pathway for mitigating environmental degradation and fostering long-term ecological resilience. This study examines the role of industrialization (IDS), economic growth (EGR), human capital (HDV), green technologies (GNN), and renewable energy consumption (RNC) in shaping ECV across G5 countries from 2000 to 2022. Employing the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) estimator, alongside the augmented mean group (AMG) and common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG) for robustness, this study unveils a positive association between EGR and ECV, indicating its adverse impact on environmental sustainability. However, IDS, HDV, GNN, and RNC exhibit negative relationships with ECV, suggesting their contributions to improving ecological sustainability. These findings highlight the need for integrated policies that promote sustainable industrial practices, enhance technological advancements, and optimize human capital to counterbalance the environmental pressures of economic growth. Aligning economic expansion with ecological sustainability remains crucial for achieving long-term environmental balance in G5 nations.