As 2030 approaches, countries are challenged to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations in 2015. In addition to public policies, innovation is at the core of global sustainable development ambitions. Accordingly, this study examines how technological innovation, economic growth, clean energy use, natural resources, and industrialization affect the load capacity factor (LCF) of the 10 most innovative countries, based on data from 1997 to 2020. Unlike conventional indicators (e.g. ecological footprint, CO₂ emissions), the LCF captures both the demand and supply dimensions of ecosystems and represents a comprehensive environmental indicator. The method of moments quantile regression (MMQR) method is used to estimate these relationships across different quantiles. The results suggest that increase in natural resources, economic growth and industrialization decreases LCF across all quantiles, while clean energy and technological innovation significantly enhance LCF, particularly in lower and middle quantiles. These results imply that policies to promote green innovation and sustainable energy should be paramount in improving environmental quality and guiding countries towards achieving the SDG targets.
Hammami et al. (Wed,) studied this question.