Since the industrial revolution, countries have been facing the issue of climate change and environmental degradation. It is widely believed that the investment in research and development of renewable energy can play a pivotal role in fighting against climate change. However, the financial risk also increases, which can influence renewable energy technology R&D budgets and environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, the current literature is silent on the linkage between financial risk, renewable energy technology budgets, and environmental quality. Against this backdrop, this article attempts to explore the dynamic linage between financial risk, renewable energy technology budgets, and ecological footprint under the Environment Kuznets Curve (EKC) framework in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. For this purpose, yearly data from 1984 to 2018 is employed using the advanced panel data estimation methods that address the slope heterogeneity and c
The impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the environment is an important but controversial topic. But assessing it faces a significant challenge for separating its policy impact from the overall effect of economic development that will also have environmental impacts. This paper attempts to provide an evolutionary and counterfactual baseline to evaluate the environmental impact of BRI, based on the distribution dynamics approach and the mobility probability plots (MPPs). Our estimation results suggest that while the majority of BRI economies will lower their emission levels compared with the world average, there are significant differences between BRI and non-BRI countries’ emission patterns and dynamics. The majority of non-BRI economies will have lower emission levels than their BRI counterparts in the absence of BRI policy, indicating that the difference in future emissions between BRI and non-BRI countries should not be completely attributed to the environmental impact