Search Results (8)

As the world’s largest developing and carbon-emitting country, China is accelerating its greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction process, and it is of vital importance in achieving the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. This paper examines the historical development and current operation of China’s carbon emissions trading market (CETM). The current progress of research on the implementation of carbon emissions trading policy (CETP) is described in four dimensions: environment, economy, innovation, and society. The results show that CETP generates clear environmental and social benefits but exhibits mixed economic and innovation effects. Furthermore, this paper analyses the challenges of China’s carbon market, including the green paradox, the low carbon price, the imperfections in cap setting and allocation of allowances, the small scope of coverage, and the weakness of the legal supervision system. Ultimately, this paper proposes recommendations for fostering China’s CETM with the anticipation of offering a comprehensive outlook for future research. Full article

In recent years, a pressing global challenge has been that increasingly stringent environmental regulations have failed to prevent global climate change. In this context, exploring the synergistic effects of a policy mix approach has emerged as a promising strategy to turn the tide. Given that companies are the primary sources of carbon emissions, this study adopts a novel micro-level perspective. It employs the difference-in-differences method and establishes a two-way fixed effects model to empirically examine the interactive effects of the Low-Carbon City Pilot (LCCP) and the Carbon Emissions Trading Pilot (CETP) on corporate low-carbon development. Based on data availability and relevance, it uses a sample of Chinese listed industrial companies in 2007–2020. The findings indicate that the CETP enhances corporate carbon performance, whereas the LCCP has no significant impact on its own. However, the combined implementation of the two policies has resulted in a synergistic effect, with green innovation playing a mediating role in this process. The study also identifies the presence of a “green paradox” under heavily polluting industries and a weakening of the policies’ effectiveness in Western China and among non-high-tech firms. For emerging countries undergoing low-carbon transitions, it is essential to design context-specific policy combinations that maximize the effectiveness of environmental regulations. Full article

In the process of China’s path to modernization, the concept of harmonious coexistence between man and nature has become increasingly prominent. In the dual context of the development of human society and the improvement of ecological wellbeing, how to reasonably exert environmental regulation policies to actively address the problem of ecological overload has become an important challenge that we need to face urgently. Therefore, based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2021, this paper uses the three-dimensional ecological footprint model to evaluate the degree of interference of human activities on the ecological level and selects the difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of external policy shocks, namely, a carbon emissions trading pilot (CETP) policy, on ecological pressure and its transmission mechanism. The results show that moderate government intervention, unified market regulation, and positive industrial response jointly enhance the mitigation effect of CETP on ecological pressure. In areas with strong environmental regulation and a high level of green credit, the incentive effect of the carbon trading mechanism is more significant. In the context of the transformation from industrial civilization to ecological civilization, the findings provide practical guidance and paths for how regions and enterprises can effectively respond to CETP and how governments, markets, and industries can jointly reduce the ecological pressure on the environment. Full article

China faces issues such as air pollution and global climate change, and the Carbon Emission Trading Policy (CETP) has attracted considerable attention as a core policy tool for achieving the “dual carbon” goals. Based on panel data from the Pearl River–West River Economic Belt (PRWREB) from 2008 to 2021, we use the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) and Spatial Difference-in-Differences (S-DID) models to explore the pollution reduction and carbon reduction effects of the CETP and its spatial heterogeneity. Our analysis reveals several interesting insights. First, the CETP has promoted a 34.1% overall reduction in pollution and carbon levels in the pilot areas, with sustained effects. Moreover, spatial spillover effects can reduce the pollution and carbon levels in the economic belt by 29.9%. Second, the pollution and carbon reduction effects of the CETP are more significant in regions with better economic development and active carbon trading. It has the best synergistic reduction effects on CO₂ and SO₂ but is less effective in reducing PM_2.5. Third, the spillover effects of the CETP on technological innovation are greater than the direct effects, with the most noticeable pollution and carbon reduction outcomes. The overall negative effect on industrial structure is that it fails to promote pollution and carbon reduction. The emission reduction mechanisms vary for different targets: CO₂ and PM_2.5 are related to energy efficiency, SO₂ to advancing industrial structure, and smoke and dust to technological innovation. Based on the research conclusions, we propose to improve the coordinated governance system for carbon and pollution, advance pollution and carbon reduction according to local conditions, and implement targeted emission reduction and efficiency enhancement. Full article

As an important factor affecting ecological sustainability, the food industry’s ecological efficiency (EE) deserves great attention and control. In 2013, China implemented a carbon emissions trading policy (CETP) to limit carbon emissions from various industries to promote the optimization of the ecological environment. To explore the ecological sustainability of China’s food industry, identify the factors affecting the EE of the food industry, and study the influence heterogeneity and influencing mechanisms, the impact of the CETP on the food industry, which emits high volumes of greenhouse gasses, requires evaluation. Many scholars have studied the policy’s effect from the perspective of EE, but they have ignored the food industry, which is the main carbon emitting sector, and there is a lack of heterogeneity analyses of the influencing factors. This study reviewed the implementation process and characteristics of the CETP in the past decades. Using provincial panel data from 2003 to 2019, this study measured the EE in the food industry through the difference-in-difference model, evaluated the emission reduction and economic effects of the CETP on the food industry, characterized the heterogeneity of the policy’s effectiveness, and analysed its mechanism using three-stage mediating regression. The results showed that (1) the CETP significantly affected the food industry’s EE, which increased by 38.3% on average in experimental provinces compared with non-experimental provinces. (2) For the food industry, the policy’s effect was most significant in the food manufacturing and tobacco subsectors, and these subsectors in the experimental provinces increased by 66.0% and 39.7%, respectively; meanwhile, the policy’s effect was not significant in agriculture and subsidiary food processing and beverage manufacturing. By industrial area, the policy’s effects were significantly higher in the eastern region compared with the central and western regions. The influence on the food industry’s EE in the eastern region was close to 150%, while in the central and western regions, it was not significant. (3) The CETP promoted the food industry’s EE by improving energy consumption structure and technological innovation. The proportion of coal consumption decreased by 6.34% on average, and the technological innovation level increased by 25.1% on average in the experimental provinces’ food industries. The research findings indicate that the CEPT is a good practice and worth spreading. For food industry enterprises with high carbon emissions, attention should be paid to low-carbon transformation through technological upgrading and management optimization. For policymakers, targeted policies are needed to establish a national unified carbon trading market so that the national carbon emissions can be controlled, and the gap between regional carbon emissions can be narrowed. Full article

Adhering to ecological priorities and promoting environmental regulations is essential for improving ecological well-being performance (EWP); conversely, EWP is a crucial measure of social and economic sustainability. From the perspective of high-quality development, we see China’s cities’ adoption of the carbon emissions trading pilot (CETP) policy as a quasi-natural experiment, and we use the difference-in-differences (DID) approach to analyze how market-based carbon credits affect the urban EWP and its action mechanism. The findings of the empirical study show that: (1) The implementation of CETP can effectively improve the quality of urban development, with an increase of 29.1% in the EWP value, effectively contributing to the realization of the goal of high-quality development; (2) the urban EWP levels in China are higher in the east, lower in the west and lowest in the middle, but they all show a fluctuating upward trend; (3) according to the heterogeneity study, the implementation of CETP has a scale effect and significant urban locational differences, and its impact on EWP of cities is greater in “advanced cities” and central region cities; (4) the implementation of CETP can advance industrial structure upgrading, thereby promoting the EWP level, but the mediating effect of technological innovation is not significant. The possible innovations in this paper are as follows: (1) It broadens the existing research system on the effectiveness of CETP policies. (2) It reconstructs the index system of EWP from the perspective of high-quality development so that its measurement results can reflect the quality of urban development more comprehensively. (3) The research samples of CETP and EWP are enriched by using prefectural-level data. Full article

The Carbon Emissions Trading Pilot Policy (CETP) has attracted more scholarly attention. However, most existing studies are only singularly focused on carbon emission reduction or economic development. More research is needed to determine whether it can promote green and sustainable urban development. Therefore, this paper takes the data from 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2016 as the research sample, uses ecological efficiency as the indicator to measure the sustainable green development of cities, and uses the difference method (DID) and the propensity score matching difference method (PSM-DID) to study whether CETP can achieve the sustainable green development of pilot cities. The results show that CETP can improve pilot cities’ ecological efficiency and realize cities’ green and sustainable development by optimizing the industrial structure and promoting technological innovation. In addition, the impact of CETP on different cities is also significantly different. Compared with small and medium-sized cities and non-provincial capital cities, CETP has a greater impact on large cities and provincial capital cities. Compared with central and western cities, CETP has a greater impact on eastern cities. CETP can improve the ecological efficiency of non-resource cities, but it cannot change the ecological efficiency of resource cities. Our models survive numerous robustness checks. Full article

Land resources have become one of the major factors limiting urban development in China. In the context of sustainable development, how to improve land use efficiency (LUE) has become a major challenge on the road to sustainable development in China. Carbon finance provides a new idea for sustainable development. With the help of carbon emissions trading policy (CETP), this paper aims to investigate whether carbon finance can optimize LUE in terms of economic effects and environmental effects. Based on the data of 158 prefectural-level cities in China from 2010 to 2017, this paper uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis to investigate these issues. Specifically, this paper measures the land use efficiency from economic effects (LUE_Eco) and environmental effects (LUE_Env) using the entropy method, and visualizes the data to obtain information on their spatio-temporal evolution patterns. Furthermore, this paper verifies the causal relationship between policy implementation and LUE_Eco and LUE_Env by using the difference in differences (DID) method. The conclusions show that: (1) the levels of LUE_Eco and LUE_Env in the pilot regions generally increase after the implementation of the CETP, but only the increase of LUE_Env is due to the policy implementation; (2) the CETP not only effectively reduces CO₂ emissions, but also promotes the reduction of industrial ‘three wastes’ emissions. Accordingly, this paper has gained insights on how to improve LUE in China. Full article