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The escalating levels of CO2 emissions from the transportation sector have been observed to exert deleterious effects on human well‐being and environmental sustainability. To mitigate these emissions, it is imperative to consider the potential contributions of environmental policies and financial innovation. Thus, this study examines the effects of financial innovation and environmental policy (environmental tax–environmental technology) on transport‐related CO2 emission (TCO2E) for BICS (i.e., Brazil, India, China and South Africa), which are characterized by substantial industrialization, rising TCO2E and growing environmental concerns. The analysis is complemented by including control variables, notably economic growth and the transition to cleaner energy, to offer a nuanced and holistic perspective on the dynamics governing this critical subject matter. The research adopts a novel econometric approach cross‐sectionally augmented auto‐regressive distributed lags for benchmark estimation and fully modified ordinary least squares–dynamic ordinary least squares for robustness analysis from 2000/Q1‐2018/Q4. The findings revealed that financial innovation and economic growth bolster TCO2E and decrease environmental quality in the region. In contrast, environmental tax, environmental innovation and energy transition decrease TCO2E. Based on findings, policy suggestions relating to implementing a carbon tax, promoting green financial innovation and others are discussed to decrease TCO2E. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of circular economy (CE) is proposed to lead humanity toward a sustainable future. Public authorities increasingly build on CE narratives. The progress of private sector actors is key to enable more circular resource flows. Still, the world falls far short from becoming circular and large‐scale implementation of CE in actual problem–solution spaces is scarce. This study sheds light into the external strategies of circular start‐ups (CSUs) in building an adequate socio‐institutional embedding for circular business models (CBMs) and puts the findings in the context of CE and sustainability transformations research. CSUs are a distinct group of CE‐oriented actors that build and implement CBMs wholistically and from scratch. Thereby, they can directly and indirectly contribute to the creation of circular innovation systems. This study defines the common CE mission of CSUs, sets it in context of respective socio‐political CE missions, and scrutinizes the roles that CSUs adopt to drive systemic CE implementation. We observe that CSUs' strategic interventions go further than only novelty creation. This article proposes and elaborates on four roles that CSUs adopt: conveners, reinforcers, pioneers, and champions. The roles differ according to the CSU business models, stakeholders, the institutional elements that are addressed, as well as the directionalities that CSUs set. The findings are discussed considering the governance, policies, and strategic management of various directionalities in which CE innovation develops. It sheds light on inadequacies and limitations for bottom‐up CE innovation in existing norms and cognition, policy, and network governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]