ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1535607
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovation Ecosystem and Technological Advances for Sustainability ResilienceView all articles
Balancing Growth and Sustainability: The Role of Renewable Energy, Fintech, and Digital Trade: Sustainable Development Path for E7 Nations
Provisionally accepted
- 1Guangxi University, Nanning, China
- 2Department of Finance and Accounting, Business School, University of Exeter, Exeter, England, United Kingdom
- 3Beijing Sport University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
- 4Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
- 5King Saud University, Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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In line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this study evaluates economic complexity's (EC) role in enhancing environmental sustainability in Emerging Seven (E7) economies from 2010 to 2022. Using the advanced panel Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR), it examines the heterogeneous effects of economic complexity, digital trade (DIT), fintech (FIN), renewable energy (RE), industrial production (IND), and economic growth (GDP) on the load capacity factor (LCF). Findings reveal that FIN and RE significantly enhance LCF, especially at higher quantiles, with coefficients of 0.236 and 1.003 at the 90th quantile. Conversely, DIT negatively impacts LCF across all quantiles (-0.611 to -0.871), worsening environmental degradation. However, EC moderates this effect, as reflected in the significant interaction term (DIT*EC), ranging from 1.110 to 2.245, fostering sustainable trade practices. A Fixed Effects robustness check confirms these results, reinforcing the critical role of RE and EC in mitigating environmental harm. The study underscores the necessity of policy measures to regulate digital trade emissions, promote green finance, and integrate renewable energy into digital economies, providing actionable insights for sustainable economic growth in emerging nations.
Keywords: Renewable Energy, Digital trade, FinTech, economic complexity, Load capacity factor, Method of Moment Quantile Regression
Received: 27 Nov 2024; Accepted: 16 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Haiyuan, Liu, Songmei, Wence and Nassani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhang Haiyuan, Guangxi University, Nanning, China
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