Ecological degradation is a major challenge for all nations. The problem is particularly worrying for South Africa, which has recently suffered from various ecological catastrophes. Thus, the empirical study evaluates the nexus between CO emissions and financial development, renewable energy, economic growth and environmental-related technologies in South Africa utilizing data between 1980 and 2020. We employed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and time-varying causality to evaluate these connections. The results from the ARDL show that financial development and environmental-related technologies lessen CO emissions while economic progress intensifies CO emissions. Surprisingly, renewable energy does not mitigate CO emissions. Furthermore, the time-varying causality shows that all the independent variables can forecast CO emissions at different sub-periods. Finally, our results are resilient to various policy ramifications useful in reducing CO emissions and associated adverse ecological consequences.
