FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT, TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION AND RENEWABLE ENERGY MITIGATING CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS IN MALAYSIA: NEW EVIDENCE FROM ARDL MODEL

Over recent decades, economic expansion in developing nations has exerted growing pressure on environmental systems, emerging as a critical driver of global climate change.However, only a limited number of studies have investigated the synergistic effects of economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), technological innovation, and renewable energy on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Malaysia.This study employs the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) bound test methodology to examine both the short-term dynamics and long-term equilibrium relationships among Malaysia's economic development, FDI, technological innovation, renewable energy consumption, and CO2 emissions from 1995 to 2023.The cointegration analysis substantiates an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions, providing empirical validation for the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the studied context.The empirical findings demonstrate that FDI and renewable energy consumption exert significant mitigating effects on CO2 emissions, whereas technological innovation exhibits an adverse environmental impact during the observed period.The research findings offer several practical insights for policy-making, including setting clear sustainable performance indicators, encouraging the industrial sector to adopt clean technologies and renewable energy sources, introducing advanced foreign technologies and environmental protection enterprises, supporting the advancement of sustainable technologies and optimizing the structure of energy consumption.