• Energy Research
• 2016-2025close

Abstract This paper examines the pollution haven effect from the perspective of carbon emission. Based on a theoretical analysis of how stringent environmental regulation affects carbon emission transfer within regions, we put forward the concept of carbon heaven effect (CHE) and explore the mechanism that environmental regulation influences carbon emissions through investment. We employ a mediating effect model to empirically study the existence of CHE in terms of per capita carbon emission, carbon emission intensity, and the proportion of regional carbon emission to the national emission. Further, the impacts of environmental regulation on the scale expansion and employment of carbon-intensive industries (CIIs) are investigated. Our results indicate that: (1) The CHE does exist in China, i.e., different environmental regulation intensities among different areas have indeed caused carbon emission transfer within regions; (2) The impact of environmental regulation on carbon emissions includes the total effect of emission reduction and the indirect effect of carbon-intensive industrial investment transfer; (3) The scale and employment of CIIs in regions with stringent environmental regulation have been constrained, while the regions with weaker environmental regulation become the havens for CIIs development; (4) Giving that the emission reduction targets were assigned and implemented at the provincial level since 2006, we further examine the effects of this constrain policy on CHE, and find that the impacts of environmental regulation on local carbon emission has strengthened.

This study constructs a modified assessment model based on the bootstrap method to estimate the CO2 shadow prices for 35 typical cities’ industrial sectors in China from 2005 to 2018. Based on data from China’s seven pilot regional carbon markets, we evaluate the current CO2 trading price distortions. The empirical results indicate that during the study period, the average CO2 shadow price for the target cities is 1915.86 yuan per tonne, decreasing to 1880.57 yuan per tonne when using the bootstrap method for bias correction. The overall trends of CO2 shadow prices in most key cities are increasing given the strengthening of environmental regulations following the 11th Five-Year Plan. In addition, compared with the CO2 shadow prices in this paper, carbon trading prices in pilot cities present significantly negative distortions, which may fail to reflect the real opportunity cost of carbon abatement. Based on the findings of this study, several policy recommendations are proposed.

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.

Abstract This paper applies the zero-sum gains data envelopment analysis (ZSG-DEA) model to assess the provincial CO2 emission reduction scheme of China in 2020 and then calculates optimized values for the provinces in 2030. Results from two standard optimization procedures to solve the ZSG-DEA model are compared. We also extend the current methods by improving the iterative approach and then introduce fairness to the efficiency-oriented approach for the 2030 case. We found that the choice of optimization procedures has only a minimal impact on the results, but the specification of model does matter. For 2020, a standard DEA approach shows that only 2 provinces out of 30 are efficient. According to the estimation results of the ZSG-DEA model, 12 provinces need to set higher reduction targets, whereas the other 18 provinces could have lower target values to achieve overall efficiency. These results are generally consistent across different optimization approaches. The improved approach is applied to further evaluate a number of scenarios in 2030, in which the adjustment values towards optimum can be calculated for each scenario. Furthermore, we show that the inclusion of fairness can significantly affect the adjustment targets, which is of great importance to policymakers

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.

Abstract In this paper, we try to investigate the effects of China's Western Development Strategy (WDS), carried out since 2000, on local ecological economic performance. We first construct an eco-productivity index that incorporates economic growth, inputs saving, and emissions reduction within an integrated analysis framework. Then the eco-productivity scores of 30 administrative provinces in China's over 1996–2015 are evaluated with sequential data envelopment analysis technique. The results indicate the eco-productivity score in the east and central area (ECA) declines continuously over the whole study period, while that in the west area (WA) increases persistently since 2000 when the WDS was launched. We infer from the narrowing gap of eco-productivity scores between the two areas that China's WDS implementation has promoted local ecological economic development to a certain extent. In subsequent, this preliminary inference is further verified by conducting an empirical test.

Abstract With the acceleration of China's urbanization, the transport sector appears one of the most important sources of SO 2 emissions in Chinese cities. Compared to the fast-growing consumption of automobile, the growth rate of urban transportation investment is relative low. This study is designed to evaluate the impact of the urban transportation investment on SO 2 emissions, using the data of capital cities of 30 provinces in China from 2002 to 2012. Our empirical results show that the urban transportation investment increases SO 2 emissions in the short run since it might cause road blockages which would enhance the emissions of the low-speed traffic. But in the long run the urban transportation investment has a positive impact on reducing SO 2 emissions as it could widen the roads and make the traffic system more accessible. Moreover, we also find that there exists a SO 2 Kuznets curve in China and environmental regulation can effectively curb SO 2 emissions. The robustness tests are conducted to support the empirical results. Policy suggestions are further recommended to help the urban traffic planning to reduce SO 2 emissions.