Green Supply Management, Renewable Innovation, and Ecological Capacity: Implications for Sustainable Development Goal 9

ABSTRACT Ecological pressures associated with industrialization, energy use, and resource‐intensive production have intensified the need to identify strategies capable of strengthening ecological capacity, particularly in major emerging economies such as China. This study examines how green supply management (GSM), renewable technological innovations (RTI), and energy prices (EP) influence China's ecological capacity over the period 1990Q1–2024Q4. Ecological capacity is measured using the Load Capacity Factor (LCF), while the Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach captures heterogeneous short‐ and long‐run dynamics. The results confirm long‐run cointegration among the variables and highlight distributional heterogeneity across different quantiles of LCF. GSM exerts a positive long‐run effect on ecological capacity, whereas RTI does not generate a consistent ecological payoff, indicating the importance of effective diffusion and adoption. EP exhibits a negative long‐run association, underscoring the limitations of price‐based mechanisms. The findings provide policy‐relevant insights for advancing SDG 9 through greener supply chains, effective innovation diffusion, and sustainable infrastructure development in China.