Renewable energy development is a fundamental prerequisite for achieving the energy transition and sustainable development. Although technological innovation plays a key role in accelerating this transition, its effectiveness may depend on the quality of countries' institutional and governance environments. This study therefore examines the effect of technological innovation on renewable energy development and the moderating role of governance quality in this relationship, using data from 59 developed and developing countries over 2000–2023. Composite indices of technological innovation and governance quality are constructed via Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and the model is estimated using the fixed-effects method with Driscoll–Kraay robust standard errors. Robustness is further assessed using Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) and fixed-effects estimation with year fixed effects. The results show that the interaction term between technological innovation and governance quality is positive and statistically significant, indicating that higher governance quality strengthens the marginal effect of technological innovation on renewable energy development. Marginal effects analysis reveals that this effect rises from approximately 1.11 at the lowest level of governance quality to approximately 2.54 at its highest level. These findings suggest that energy transition policies should, beyond supporting innovation and clean technologies, prioritize improving governance quality, reforming institutional structures, and channeling financial resources toward green investment which in line with developing financing instruments tailored to renewable energy projects can effectively reinforce the energy transition.