The environmental impact of information and communication technology (ICT) has drawn increasing attention for two decades. The behaviour of ICT is positive towards economic growth; however, its environmental implications cannot be ignored. This empirical research explores the roles of ICT, economic growth, and energy consumption in environmental pollution across different regions from 1990 to 2015. Robust long‐run panel data estimation methods fully modified ordinary least square and dynamic ordinary least square and Driscoll–Kraay regression are applied. To summarise the results, ICT reduces the level of CO2 emissions across high‐ and middle‐income countries; however, contrary to this, ICT increases CO2 emissions in low‐income countries. Also, energy consumption is responsible for the increase in CO2 emissions in all income groups as expected. Finally, the environmental Kuznets curve is proved in all income groups. It is inferred that high‐ and middle‐income regions of the world have achieved a level of environmental sustainability in the significance of ICT, but this is not the case in low‐income countries.

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This study explores the nexus between financial development, access to electricity, and CO2 emissions in Pakistan over the period from 1990 to 2015, incorporating the role of natural resources and population growth. We checked the stationarity of the data by using three different unit root tests (ADF, Phillip Pesaran, and DG‐FLS). Long‐ and short‐run elasticities have been determined through auto‐regressive distributive lag (ARDL) method. The empirical results confirmed that financial development and access to electricity increase CO2 emissions and deteriorate the environmental quality. In addition, the population growth is responsible for growing CO2 emissions in Pakistan, while natural resources have insignificant relation with CO2 emissions. Furthermore, bidirectional causality exists between population growth and natural resources, whereas unidirectional causality is detected among financial development and CO2 emissions, natural resources and population growth, and financial development and population growth. The newly developed findings suggest helpful policy implications to adequately address the issue of CO2 emissions without compromising economic development.

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