Does green growth in E-7 countries depend on economic policy uncertainty, institutional quality, and renewable energy? Evidence from quantile-based regression

[Display omitted] •Long-run effect of policy uncertainty and institutional quality on green growth.•Distributional heterogeneity using Panel Quantile Regression.•Economic policy uncertainty has negative impact on green growth.•Institutional quality and renewable energy consumption increases the green growth.•Trade openness has positive impact on green growth. Environmental degradation is one of the most debatable topics at international forums and it is considered a prime concern for the entire world. Therefore, researchers and policymakers have turned their attention from conventional economic growth to green growth. Although the existing literature has discussed several determinants of green growth, the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU), renewable energy consumption (RENE), and institutional quality (IQ) on green growth (GGDP) is relatively unexplored. Hence, this study is the earliest attempt to investigate the impact of EPU, IQ, and RENE on GGDP for emerging seven (E-7) countries from 1996 to 2019. In doing so, we apply panel quantile regression (PQR). The empirical findings delineate that EPU has a negative impact on GGDP, whereas IQ and RENE enhance the GGDP in E-7 countries. Based on the outcomes, this study suggests policy implications for achieving targets of the SDG 07, SDG 08, SDG 13, and SDG 16. The governments of these countries can achieve higher GGDP by ensuring political stability and reliable macroeconomic policies and through making such flexible policies that can easily control or address unpredictable future economic issues.