scholarly journals How Does Green Technology Innovation Affect Carbon Emissions? A Spatial Econometric Analysis of China’s Provincial Panel Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aixin Cai ◽  
Shiyong Zheng ◽  
LiangHua Cai ◽  
Hongmei Yang ◽  
Ubaldo Comite

Due to an increasing number of issues such as climate change, sustainable development has become an important theme worldwide. Sustainable development is inseparable from technological innovation. Only by making technological breakthroughs can we ensure the overall integration of economic development and environmental protection. Here, based on China’s inter-provincial panel data from 2006 to 2019, we examine the relationship between green technological innovation and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 30 provinces (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Tibet) and sub-regions (eastern, central, and western China) in China using a space panel econometric model based on the STIRPAT equation. Additionally, we use geographic information analysis methods to analyze the spatial pattern and evolution characteristics of CO2 emissions. Our major finding is that, from the perspective of the whole country, green technology innovation has a negative correlation with carbon emissions, but the effect is not obvious. In addition, from the regional sample, green technology innovation in the eastern and central regions can effectively reduce carbon emissions, while in the western region, green technology innovation can promote carbon emissions in the province. At the same time, the research results show a strong spatial spillover effect of inter-provincial carbon dioxide emissions, and the progress of green technology in neighboring provinces has a negative impact on carbon emissions in their own provinces. Therefore, cross-province policies and actions for reducing carbon emissions are necessary. Additionally, our results show that carbon-emission driving factors, such as economic development, industrial structure, energy consumption structure, and population, have a significant positive effect on carbon dioxide emissions. Based on the above research results, we put forward corresponding policy recommendations.

Author(s):  
Shihong Zeng ◽  
Gen Li ◽  
Shaomin Wu ◽  
Zhanfeng Dong

The Paris agreement is a unified arrangement for the global response to climate change and entered into force on 4 November 2016. Its long-term goal is to hold the global average temperature rise well below 2 °C. China is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 through various measures, one of which is green technology innovation (GTI). This paper aims to analyze the levels of GTI in 30 provinces in mainland China between 2001 and 2019. It uses the spatial econometric models and panel threshold models along with the slack based measure (SBM) and Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index to analyze the spatial spillover and nonlinear effects of GTI on regional carbon emissions. The results show that GTI achieves growth every year, but the innovation efficiency was low. China’s total carbon dioxide emissions were increasing at a marginal rate, but the carbon emission intensity was declining year by year. Carbon emissions were spatially correlated and show significant positive agglomeration characteristics. The spatial spillover of GTI plays an important role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In the underdeveloped regions in China, this emission reduction effect was even more significant.


2021 ◽  
Vol 275 ◽  
pp. 02039
Author(s):  
Jing Niu

Environmental problems caused by carbon emissions have received widespread attention, and technological innovation has an important impact on carbon emissions. This paper uses data from 30 provinces (excluding Tibet) in China from 2009 to 2018 as a sample, and empirically analyzes the relationship between technological innovation and carbon emissions by constructing panel data and fixed effects models. The results show that technological innovation can curb carbon emissions. Therefore, China should increase research and application of low-carbon technologies to promote sustainable economic development.


Author(s):  
Wenmei KANG ◽  
Benfan LIANG ◽  
Keyu XIA ◽  
Fei XUE ◽  
Yu LI

After setting the goal of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, it has become an irresistible trend for China to decouple carbon emissions from its economic growth. Since cities play a central role in reducing carbon emissions, the issues such as whether and when their carbon dioxide emissions can be decoupled from economic growth have become the focus of attention. Based on the carbon dioxide emissions of 264 prefecture-level cities in China from 2000 to 2017, this paper uses the Tapio decoupling index to measure the decoupling relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth of cities, analyzes the space–time evolution characteristics of carbon emissions and decoupling indexes by stages, and explores the relationship between carbon emissions and socio-economic development characteristics such as per capita GDP and industrial structure. The main conclusions drawn therefrom are as follows: (i) From 2000 to 2017, the city-wide carbon emissions rose from 2.484 billion tons in 2000 to 7.462 billion tons in 2017, registering a total increase of 200.40%. But the growth rate of carbon emissions within cities has been significantly reduced. (ii) As years passed by, the number of cities that achieved strong decoupling saw a significant increase, from zero in the 10th–11th Five-Year Plan period to 14 in the 12th Five-Year Plan period and the first two years of the 13th Five-Year Plan period, accounting for 5.3% of the total number of cities. (iii) There is an inverted U-shaped curve relationship between per capita carbon emissions and per capita GDP, which is consistent with the EKC curve hypothesis, but Chinese cities are still in the growth stage of the quadratic curve currently. The correlation between per capita CO2 emission and the proportion of the secondary industry was positive. The results of this study are expected to provide experience for the low-carbon development of cities in China and other developing countries, and provide references for the formulation and evaluation of policies and measures related to low-carbon economic development based on the decoupling model.


2012 ◽  
Vol 616-618 ◽  
pp. 1484-1489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xu Shan ◽  
Hua Wang Shao

The coordination development of economy-energy-environment was discussed with traditional environmental loads model, combined with "decoupling" theory. Considering the possibilities of social and economic development, this paper set out three scenarios, and analyzed quantitatively the indexes, which affected carbon dioxide emissions, including population, per capita GDP, industrial structure and energy structure. Based on this, it forecasted carbon dioxide emissions in China in future. By comparing the prediction results, it held that policy scenario was the more realistic scenario, what’s more it can achieve emission reduction targets with the premise of meeting the social and economic development goals. At last, it put forward suggestions to implement successfully policy scenario, from energy structure, industrial structure, low-carbon technology and so on.


Author(s):  
Jintao Ma ◽  
Qiuguang Hu ◽  
Weiteng Shen ◽  
Xinyi Wei

To cope with climate change and achieve sustainable development, low-carbon city pilot policies have been implemented. An objective assessment of the performance of these policies facilitates not only the implementation of relevant work in pilot areas, but also the further promotion of these policies. This study uses A-share listed enterprises from 2005 to 2019 and creates a multi-period difference-in-differences model to explore the impact of low-carbon city pilot policies on corporate green technology innovation from multiple dimensions. Results show that (1) low-carbon city pilot policies stimulates the green technological innovation of enterprises as manifested in their application of green invention patents; (2) the introduction of pilot policies is highly conducive to green technological innovation in eastern cities and enterprises in high-carbon emission industries; and (3) tax incentives and government subsidies are important fiscal and taxation tools that play the role of pilot policies in low-carbon cities. By alleviating corporate financing constraints, these policies effectively promote the green technological innovation of enterprises. This study expands the research on the performance of low-carbon city pilot policies and provides data support for a follow-up implementation and promotion of policies from the micro perspective at the enterprise level.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7148
Author(s):  
Wenjie Zhang ◽  
Mingyong Hong ◽  
Juan Li ◽  
Fuhong Li

The implementation of green finance is a powerful measure to promote global carbon emissions reduction that has been highly valued by academic circles in recent years. However, the role of green credit in carbon emissions reduction in China is still lacking testing. Using a set of panel data including 30 provinces and cities, this study focused on the impact of green credit on carbon dioxide emissions in China from 2006 to 2016. The empirical results indicated that green credit has a significantly negative effect on carbon dioxide emissions intensity. Furthermore, after the mechanism examination, we found that the promotion impacts of green credit on industrial structure upgrading and technological innovation are two effective channels to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Heterogeneity analysis found that there are regional differences in the effect of green credit. In the western and northeastern regions, the effect of green credit is invalid. Quantile regression results implied that the greater the carbon emissions intensity, the better the effect of green credit. Finally, a further discussion revealed there exists a nonlinear correlation between green credit and carbon dioxide emissions intensity. These findings suggest that the core measures to promote carbon emission reduction in China are to continue to expand the scale of green credit, increase the technology R&D investment of enterprises, and to vigorously develop the tertiary industry.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Baptiste Aboyitungiye ◽  
Suryanto Suryanto ◽  
Evi Gravitiani

Abstract The recent climatic phenomena observed in developing countries since the 2000s have raised concerns, fears, and debates within the international community and economists. Human activities are largely responsible for atmospheric warming through their emissions of CO2 and polluting substances with dramatic consequences and numerous losses of human life in some countries. Using panel data covering the 2000-2016 period, this study investigated the social vulnerability due to the CO2 emissions through an empirical study of CO2’s determinants in selected countries of sub-Sahara African and Southeast Asian countries. The STIRPAT model gave out the result that; explanatories causes of carbon dioxide emissions are different in the two regions: the agriculture-forestry and fishing value-added, and human development index have a strong explanatory power on CO2 emissions in the ASEAN countries, the per-capita domestic product has a positive and significant influence on carbon emissions in the SSA countries, ceteris paribus, but was statistically insignificant in the ASEAN countries. The growing population decreases carbon emissions in the SSA selected countries while is not statically significant in the ASEAN countries. There is therefore a kind of double penalty: those who suffer, and will suffer the most from the impacts of climate change due to CO2 emissions, are those who contribute the least to the problem. These results provide insight into future strategies for the mitigation of climatic hazards already present in some places and potential for others which will be felt on different scales across the regions. Some of the inevitable redistributive effects of those risks can be corrected by providing financial support to the poorest populations hardest hit by natural disasters.


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