Abstract
The study investigates the interactive impact of oil-rent and socio-economic indicators (economic growth, energy consumption, green finance, gas flaring and population growth) on CO2 emissions in Nigeria from 1982 to 2024. The study employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) estimation technique and finds that the main impact of economic growth, oil-rent and gas flaring (GFL) on the level of CO2 emissions shows a significant increment in million kilotons. However, the interactive impact of the said indicators with oil-rent has a statistically significant reducing impact on the level of CO2 emissions. Moreover, the main impact of energy consumption and green finance shows a significant reducing impact on CO2 emissions. Also, the interactive impact of green finance and population growth with oil-rent has no statistical significant impact on CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the results of marginal effects from the interactive ARDL model shows that economic growth, energy consumption, and gas flaring shows a decreasing marginal effect on the level of CO2 emissions given the minimum and maximum values of oil-rent as the moderator. However, green finance and population growth marginally increased the level of CO2 emissions at both minimum and maximum values of oil-rent. In light of the foregoing, it is recommended that key stakeholders in the Nigerian environmental sustainability sector such as: Federal Ministry of Environment (FME), National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) and National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) are required to strengthen policies relating to climate change mitigation strategies such as: the imposition of surcharges on automobiles and plant machineries; adoption of electrical solar-powered automobiles; the utilization of clean energy sources like wind turbines and solar power generation systems.