Natural resource rents, energy transition and socioeconomic factors to achieve sustainable development: Novel insights from Bangladesh

• Impact of natural resources, social factors and energy transition in Bangladesh. • NRR and economic factors are analyzed using ARDL, ECM and prediction methods. • All the variables are stationary and show long-run cointegration and relationships. • Natural and economic factors, show positive association with the energy transition. • Policymakers should focus on the multi-scale impacts of energy changeover. Realizing affordable and clean energy requires a global transition away from reliance on fossil fuels toward sustainable energy sources; however, the significance of natural resource rents (NRR) in this transition remains surprisingly underexplored. The aim of this study is toward analyzing the impact of eight natural resource factors in the Bangladesh perspective, and this study covers the period 1980–2022. Additionally, the ARDL model is employed. We employed different types of regression model evaluation metrics (i.e., RMSE, MAE, and MAPE) to solve the desired problem at hand. The outcomes show that (i) all the variables at the first difference represent the cointegration test, while the bounds test outcomes confirm that there is long-run cointegration and relationships among energy transition, energy import, natural gas, total natural resources, oil, and forest rents. (ii) The natural resource rents and economic growth factors show a positive relationship with energy transition in Bangladesh between 0.55% and 3.90% in the short run and between 0.05% and 7.69% in the long run. This suggests that even a 1% change in resource rent and economic growth factors can still lead to optimistic growth, driven by rapid economic growth and the intense use of natural resources, which provides advanced development for its energy sector. (iii) The prediction results provide RMSE higher than MAE, while MAPE for energy transition is calculated at 1.45%, suggesting that energy transition processing in Bangladesh can be properly adopted. Finally, based on a comprehensive analysis of Bangladesh’s energy transition, resource rents, and economic factors, the study suggests its contributions to resource governance and plans evidence-based pathways for rent management, import structure, and renewable energy transition with long-run environmental stability.