<p>With the advent of technology, the digital ecosystem, financial development, institutional transformation, and economic expansion have shifted global priorities, with protecting the environment and ensuring sustainability becoming major concerns. The study tests for the presence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) by examining the environmental implications of institutional quality, renewable energy consumption, and financial development in selected countries, while controlling for economic growth and trade openness from 2010 to 2020. The study employs the two-step system generalised method of moments (GMM) approach for empirical analysis to estimate the coefficient, accounting for endogeneity and persistence in ecological degradation. The study classifies countries by income levels and regional groupings, offering a nuanced assessment of structural differences in environmental performance. The empirical results depict that renewable energy consumption and financial development significantly reduce the ecological footprint in all panels, whereas trade openness increases it. Moreover, the results depict that in the upper-middle-income economies and certain selected regions, the institutional quality plays a substantial role in improving environmental outcomes. Though the EKC hypothesis is supported in several panels, the findings still do not reflect that economic growth alone leads to environmental sustainability. Instead, environmental improvements appear to depend on factors such as renewable energy adoption, effective institutions, and supportive financial facilities. Finally, the results suggest that, for sustainable development, policy frameworks must be customised to regional and income-level characteristics, while emphasising the strengthening of governance, accelerating the energy transition, and promoting green financial initiatives.</p>