Defining the roles of socio-economic factors and bureaucratic quality to minimize the impacts of fossil fuels consumption on CO2 emissions in G-20 countries

G-20 nations are committed to reducing CO2 emissions considering their commitments to the United Nations. Therefore, this work investigates the associations between bureaucratic quality, socio-economic factors, fossil fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions from 1990 to 2020. To counter the problem of cross-sectional dependence, this work applies to cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL). The valid second-generation methodologies are applied, and the results cannot be found in the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). Fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) exert a negative impact on environmental quality. The direct impact of bureaucratic quality and socio-economic factors are suitable to lower CO2 emissions. A 1% increase in bureaucratic quality and socio-economic factors will lower CO2 emissions by 0.174% and 0.078% respectively in the long run. The indirect effect of bureaucratic quality and socio-economic factors is significant in reducing the CO2 emissions created by fossil fuels. The wavelet plots also validate these findings that bureaucratic quality is important to lower environmental pollution in 18 G-20 member countries. Considering the findings, this research presents important policy instruments that there is a need to bring clean energy sources into the total energy mix. For this purpose, it is important to improve bureaucratic quality to speed up the decision-making process for clean energy infrastructural development.