• Energy Research
• 8. Economic growth close

Abstract With the impacts of climate change causing widespread concerns, many scholars had discussed carbon leakage in the international trade, which ignored carbon transfer within domestic sectors. Departing from them, this paper took into account energy-related CO2 emissions embodied in intermediate production processes. We used the SRIO model to calculate and analyze the carbon footprint of economic sectors in India during the period of 1995–2009, and also investigated the changes in the carbon emission intensity of each sector. The results showed that, from the production perspective, the most famous "high carbon" sector was EGW (electricity, gas and water supply), and this sector accounted for 60% of the CO2 emissions of the secondary industry. From the consumption perspective, this ratio was only maintained at between 10%–16%. In contrast, traditional "low carbon" sector, CON (construction) emitted the largest CO2 to other sectors. In addition, more than 90% of the sectors showed a decreasing trend of carbon emission intensity. The conclusions of this paper have important policy implications for the correct allocation of CO2 emission responsibility, establishment of fair and effective emission reduction policies and the transformation of low carbon economy in India.

This paper investigates how industries' participation in global value chains (GVCs) affects their own energy intensity. Both industries' GVCs position and GVCs participation degree are constructed to describe the characteristics of industries' participation in GVCs. We first provide a theoretical analysis on the impacting mechanism of industries' participation in GVCs on energy intensity. Then a panel data of 56 industries in 42 countries over the period 2000 to 2014 is used for empirical tests. The results show that the promotion of industries' GVCs position has significantly reduced their own energy intensity, while the effect of industries' GVCs participation degree on that is ambiguous. The improvement of the industrial internal structure and technology progress are the main channels through which the promotion of GVCs position reduces energy intensity. Compared to backward GVCs position, the change of forward GVCs position has a greater impact on energy intensity. Moreover, for developed countries, the deepening of GVCs participation degree reduces manufacturing industries' energy intensity, whereas for developing countries, the deepening of GVCs participation degree increases manufacturing industries’ energy intensity, which verifies the pollution haven hypothesis to some extent.

Energy saving and emissions reduction has recalibrated China’s economic development mode to a more sustainable way. In this paper, we construct a novel total factor productivity (TFP) index using a sub-vector enhanced hyperbolic distance function, which simultaneously credits for an expansion in economic output along with contractions in energy input and undesirable output. Subsequently, this index is employed to evaluate the TFP change for 30 provincial regions in China during 2006–2015. The results indicate that China’s productivity considering energy saving and emissions reduction experiences a gradual improvement shifting from decline to increase throughout this decade, and the amelioration can mainly be attributed to the efficiency improvements from the east regions, while the contributions from technical change component will not emerge until 2013 due to insufficient energy and environmental R&D investments. Finally, some policy recommendations are also put forward on how to enhance China’s productivity.

Abstract Differential Electricity Pricing (DEP), an energy-saving policy promulgated by China's central government for energy-intensive industries, has made great achievement in energy conservation and emission reduction. We investigate the economic effects of DEP policy using the Difference-in-Differences approach and Discrete-Time Hazard model. Based on the micro data of manufacturing firms in Hunan Province, our research found that the DEP policy has led to a decline in their output, revenue and profits. Further research found that the DEP policy has led to a decrease in employment, but hardly affected fixed assets and the probability of exiting the market. After adopting DEP policy, firms accelerate equipment upgrades but create more excess production capacity. We provide reference for a comprehensive evaluation of DEP policy.

Low economic profit usually reduces the incentive of producers to operate their wastewater treatment technologies effectively. It is necessary to investigate the performance of environmentally friendly production technologies that reduce wastewater discharges and generate economic outputs simultaneously (EPTWs) in China over the past decade. In this paper, we apply the Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index widely used in the field of economics to evaluate the productivity change of EPTWs for 30 administrative provinces in China during 2003–2015. The pathways of the productivity change are further identified by decomposing the productivity index into two components: technological change and technical efficiency change. The results show that China’s environmental productivity index associated with wastewater reduction had undergone a downward trend, and evident spatial disparities are observed among the 30 provincial regions. Moreover, the changes of China’s environmental productivity over the whole studied period can mainly be attributed to technological progress, while the technical efficiency component has contributed little, although its annual contributing rate is in an increasing trend.

Abstract Substituting energy with capital (SEC) in economic productions has become a common practice both for business owners and policy-makers to improve their energy and environmental efficiency. However, seldom previous studies on energy efficiency and/or environmental performance evaluation took this role into account. This paper aims to shed some light on the effects of SEC on China's aggregated energy and environmental efficiency (AEEE) within a parametric stochastic frontier analysis framework. Moreover, influencing factors of regional efficiency score are also discussed using a pooled regression model. The results indicate that SEC poses significant effects on improving China's AEEE, and this impact appears obvious regional variation that regions with lower efficiency scores hold more extensive potential to improve their AEEE by means of SEC. Furthermore, upgrading industrial structure and decreasing the proportion of coal in energy consumption make great sense to improve China's AEEE.

Abstract Given the vital importance of global value chains (GVCs) position for a country's international competitiveness, this paper tries to investigate the impacts of environmental regulation on the GVCs position of China's industrial sector. Using the latest value-added decomposition method, we first measure the GVCs position of China's industrial sector from 2003 to 2014. Subsequently, both two-stage least squares (2SLS) method with panel data and mediating effect model are employed to empirically examine the effects of environmental regulation on China's position in GVCs. The results indicate that environmental regulation has significantly upgraded the GVCs position of China's industrial sector, and the effect is more evident for the sub-sectors with originally lower GVCs position. The mediation effect test shows that increasing R&D investment is an important channel through which environmental regulation affects the GVCs position of China's industrial sector, which verifies the existence of the Porter hypothesis. Further analysis finds that the enhancement of GVCs position of China's industrial sector caused by environmental regulation is mainly achieved through reducing the backward GVCs position.

Abstract In this paper, we first identify China's carbon-intensive industries (CIIs) by constructing a carbon intensive index taking both the scale and intensity of CO2 emission into account. Then the strong version of Porter Hypothesis (PH), i.e., the positive effect of environmental regulation on total factor productivity (TFP) of China's CIIs is tested. In order to overcome the endogenous issue of model specification, two-stage least squares (2SLS) method is employed. The results indicate that there is a significant inverted U-shape relationship between environmental regulation intensity and the TFP of China's CIIs, demonstrating the inexistence of strong PH effect in a long run, and the impact of environmental regulation on CIIs is changing gradually from innovation offsets to compliance costs. In addition, optimal environmental regulation intensities for different CIIs are also studied according to their locations on the inverted U-shaped curve: the Production and Supply of Electric Power and Heat Power Industry has exceeded the optimal environmental regulation intensity, while the remaining CIIs have not reached their inflection points. Therefore, specific policy proposals should be formulated according to the different stages of environmental regulation in various industries.

Abstract In this study, we develop a novel analysis framework for evaluating the effects of resource reallocation from the correction of factor market distortion (FMD) on total factor productivity (TFP) gains. We first measure FMD in China's heavy industry sector from 1995 to 2012, and then investigate the effects of resource reallocation from FMD correction by using the price elasticity of factor demands as a link, along with its potential TFP gains. The results indicate that: (1) Taking the price of capital as a reference, the prices of labour and energy in the study period were relatively higher to different extents. (2) If current FMD were fully corrected, the labour input in China's heavy industry sector would increase by 25.37%, whereas capital and energy inputs would decrease by 18.51% and 10.57%, respectively. (3) The resource reallocation effects resulting from current FMD correction will bring about significant TFP improvement (by 8.55%) in China's heavy industry sector, and there are evident industrial differences and stage characteristics for these promoting effects.