Most countries, notably those that signed the Paris Climate Agreement, prioritize achieving the zero carbon or carbon neutrality aim. Unlike earlier studies, this one assesses the contribution of environmental policy, clean energy, green innovation, and renewable energy to the E7 economies’ achievement of carbon neutrality goals from 1990 to 2019. Findings emanating from the study show that the EKC hypothesis is valid in E7 countries. Implying that emissions in the E7 countries increased with the kick-off of development but declined later due to possible potent environmental regulatory policies put in place. Similarly, across all models, renewable energy (REN), green innovations (GINNO), environmental tax (ETAX), and technological innovations (TECH) were found to exert a negative and significant impact on carbon emissions in the E7 countries both in the short and long run. On the other hand, economic expansion (GDP) positively impacts environmental deterioration. Furthermore, the country-specific result shows that, on average, Brazil, India, China, Russia, Mexico, and Indonesia have significant environmental policies aiding carbon abatement. Except for Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, the income growth in the rest of the countries does not follow the EKC proposition. Furthermore, the causality result revealed a unidirectional causal relationship between GDP, REN, and GINNO to CO₂ emission. No causality was found between ETAX with CO₂, while a bi-directional causality exists between technology and CO₂ emissions. Based on the finding, policymakers in the E7 countries should move away from fossil fuels because future electricity output will not be sufficient to reduce emissions considerably. Environmental regulations, encouraging technological innovation, adopting green and sustainable technology, and clean energy sources, among other things, demand radical and broad changes.

The present work aims to contribute to the existing literature by assessing the influence of insurance market development on the UAE's environmental quality. This study stands to be the first to evaluate the influence of the insurance market on environmental quality in the UAE. The study used an advanced approach to confirm the cointegrating relationship among selected variables: bootstrap Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) testing and the Bayer and Hanck test for co-integration. The empirical outcomes reveal that renewable energy consumption stimulates environmental quality in the short and long run. Furthermore, empirical outcomes show that insurance market development has a positive effect on the level of environmental quality in the country. Therefore, policymakers in the UAE are advised to make policies and strategies to reinforce the sustainability of insurance markets that would minimize environmental pollution by giving incentives to whoever contributes minimal carbon and uses eco-friendly materials. This can be achieved through an active role in green investments and product development to promote environmental quality and increase insurers” profitability and credit rating.