Does geothermal energy and natural resources affect environmental sustainability? Evidence in the lens of sustainable development

Climate change and global warming have been driven by a rise in carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations in recent decades, posing a danger to environmental sustainability. Thus, this research scrutinizes the effects of two types of energy (coal and geothermal) and natural resources on CO₂ emissions in 10 newly industrialized countries (NICs). The study also considers the role of financial globalization using a data between 1990 and 2019. This research applied a fresh nonparametric econometric technique termed "method of moments quantile regression (MMQR)." This approach is resistant to outliers and produces an asymmetric connection between variables. Furthermore, the long-run estimators (AMG and CCEMG) are employed as a robustness check. The findings reveal that natural resources, coal, and economic growth contribute to the degradation of the environment in the NICs in all quantiles (0.1-0.90). However, geothermal energy aids in enhancing environmental sustainability at all quantile distributions (0.1-0.90). Our findings are robust with alternative methods (AMG and CCEMG). The research's outcomes have the potential to help NICs nations design policies. Finally, based on the research results, a policy framework is proposed to solve the objectives of SDGs 7 and 13.