This study investigates the influence of economic policy uncertainty, financial development, environmental governance, and informal economy on renewable energy consumption in BRICST economies using continuously updated fully modified (CUP-FM), and continuously updated bias-corrected (CUP-BC) estimators. Our preliminary findings confirm cross-sectional dependency, data non-stationarity, and cointegration across model variables. The long-run results show that economic policy uncertainty reduces renewable energy consumption, while financial development, environmental regulations, and shadow economy significantly facilitate renewable energy. Manifestly, environmental regulations exhibit the strongest marginal influence on renewable energy consumption. Similar findings are endorsed using alternative estimators and suggest that stringent environmental regulations, stable economic policies, and promoting financial depth, access,...