Green Technology and Financial Innovation Synergies for Sustainable Energy Transitions in Central Asia

ABSTRACT The countries of Central Asia, mainly, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, as well as Uzbekistan are highly resource‐dependent, landlocked, and determined by the energy infrastructure of Soviet times, which introduces unique impediments to decarbonization in a rush. This research examines the playing part of financial technology, green technology, and natural resources (NRT) in determining the energy transition and carbon emissions in these Central Asian countries between the year 2000 and 2021. The analysis indicates that NRT plays a significant part in estimating carbon footprints because they reinforce the pathways of fossil fuel extraction and export by using the Method of Moments Quantile Regression to focus on the heterogeneous effects and the Cross‐Sectional Autoregressive Distributed Lag to determine the long‐term dynamics. Financial technology addresses the emissions through increasing digital financial inclusion, facilitating the carbon market, and redirecting capital to renewable projects that fit the grid and financing conditions of the region. Green technology shows the least direct impacts, which are structural barriers in terms of aged infrastructures, poor regulatory motivators, and a domestic lack of research and development. Urbanization makes emissions more intense as well as concentrates demand and provides certain centers of renewable implementation and energy‐saving retrofits. Locating the analysis in a long‐term Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology model, the paper considers financial technology a moderator in the nexus of resources, innovation, and sustainability and takes into consideration the institutional and geographical peculiarities of Central Asia. Its findings highlight financial technology as being strategic to fill in infrastructural and institutional space gaps that restrict the introduction of clean energy, specifically in resource‐dependent, post‐Soviet environments. Through a combination of reflection of region‐based knowledge in the STIRPAT concept, the work does not only shed some light on the intricate interdependencies between natural resources, technology, and emissions, but also identifies scalable ways of sustainable transition. To the Central Asian policymakers, the findings indicate practical policies and measures that empower domestic energy innovation to meet the global climate change agenda by focusing on regional governance, provocative financial creativity, and structural contemporaryization to ensure successful conversion of SDGs 7 which is clean energy; 9 which is industry, innovation, and infrastructure; and 13 which is climate action.