Human progress has become detrimental to the environment. Moreover, the failure to mitigate pollution would eventually impact negatively on the economy. This study investigates the influence of technological innovation, research and development, and quality of governance on carbon emissions for the European Union countries while controlling for industrialization, renewable energy, trade openness and foreign direct investment from 1996 to 2018 by employing the method of moment quantile regression technique. The result revealed that renewable energy, trade openness, and quality governance boost environmental quality, while technological innovation and industrialization increase carbon emissions. Also, the interaction between technological innovation and quality governance, research and development and quality governance as well as industrialization and quality governance decreases carbon emission while that of foreign direct investment and quality governance increases carbon emission. From the causality analysis, there is a bidirectional relationship between research and development and carbon emission, technology innovation and carbon emission, renewable energy and carbon emission, trade openness and carbon emission as well as industrialization and carbon emission. Moreover, a unidirectional connection was obtained between foreign direct investment and carbon emission, as well as quality governance and carbon emission. Based on the outcomes, comprehensive policy directions are suggested for policymakers in these countries.