The prominence of fossil energy resources in ecological sustainability of BRICS: The key role of institutional worth

Introduction: The relationship between fossil fuel energy resources and environmental degradation has been quantified from theoretical empirical perspectives. However, none of these studies considered the conditioning role played by institutions in nexus, especially for BRICS countries. Therefore, current study examines moderating institutional quality using annual data 1996–2018 Method: employs novel cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) estimator, robust to dependency heterogeneity, short-run long-run estimation. Moreover, mean group (AMG) common correlated effects (CCEMG) estimators are used robustness analysis. Results: finding reveals that resources, globalization, growth significantly positively affect ecological footprint, whereas negatively footprint Furthermore, interaction term with moderates energy-EFP nexus. Finally, we performed Dumitrescu Hurlin (DH) panel causality analysis determine direction variables. Except intuitions growth, found a unidirectional explanatory variables EFP. Discussion: provides evidence recommends importance sustainability.