The pathway to sustainable development: The roles of financial development, technological innovation, and educational development in energy poverty alleviation

This paper investigates the dynamics of energy poverty by evaluating the roles played by financial development, technological innovation, and educational development, among other factors. It seeks to identify pathways for sustainable development in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries. Based on recent panel data from 2000 to 2020, this research classified the sample into various income groups for a comparative analysis. A multidimensional comprehensive index of energy poverty was then formulated through principal component analysis (PCA). This study assesses the relationships between variables using a novel panel quantile autoregressive distributed lag (QARDL), ordinary least squares (OLS), panel unit root tests, Kao cointegration tests, and Wald tests. The results of the Kao tests confirm the presence of cointegration among the variables across all income groups and the overall sample. The panel QARDL approach indicates a significant and negative long-term relationship between financial development and energy poverty across all income groups other than the low-income countries. Similarly, technological innovation has a negative long-term association with energy poverty for most groups, with the exception being the upper-to-middle-income countries. Furthermore, educational development negatively influences energy poverty in the long term for all groups other than lower-middle-income countries. The findings for the overall sample suggest that financial and educational development are negatively connected with energy poverty in both the long and short term, while technological innovation only has a negative connection in the short term. In addition, the Wald test results revealed time-varying integration and parameter stability in both the long and short terms.