• Energy Research

The unexpected emergence of COVID-19 has placed businesses throughout the globe under considerable financial hardship, and financial constraints are a significant barrier to business expansion, particularly in developing countries with insufficient credit markets. Using yearly data for Chinese listed businesses from 367 cities, we examine the impact of COVID-19 on financial restrictions and the corresponding mechanisms of action by using a difference-in-differences (DID) methodology. We discover that COVID-19 leads to a significant increase of 0.117 in the KZ index of listed firms, i.e., an increase in financing constraints, and this result is consistent with various robustness tests. We also show that COVID-19 considerably lowers a company’s capacity to obtain external financing by increasing debt costs and deterring commercial credit. The pandemic significantly reduced the company’s commercial credit by 0.008 and increased debt costs by 0.2%. Moreover, the data demonstrate variation across industries, business ownership, and firm scale. Our findings indicate that decreasing information asymmetries facilitate successful adaptation to and recovery from external shocks. Our analysis suggests that governments should promulgate policies that are conducive to corporate financing to help companies maintain development during the outbreak of the epidemic and ensure economic sustainability.

Abstract Energy efficiency improvement is usually regarded as an effective way to decrease energy consumption and to fight climate change, but it also booms energy consumption through rebound effects. But the improvement of energy efficiency also has rebound effects, which increases energy consumption and emission. So this paper arms to capture the rebound effects of efficiency improvement by considering zero-cost breakthrough of energy efficiency and price jump of energy purchase. First, energy efficiency improvement, measured by zero-cost breakthrough of energy efficiency, stimulates energy consumption, but it may reduce the total emission. Second, both the direct and indirect rebound effects of energy efficiency improvement on energy consumption and environment are captured. Interestingly, jumping energy price decreases both the direct and indirect rebound effect. Finally, the result of the paper shows that restriction of individuals’ entry or competition restriction moderates the rebound effects of energy efficiency improvement.

This paper presents a theoretical study of the effects of subsidizing energy contracts. The major findings are as follows. First, under the pressure of competition, technology promotion of energy service companies (ESCOs) reduces the price of energy contracts, while improving both demand and energy conservation. Second, subsidies for energy contracts improve market demand, ESCOs' profits, and energy conservation. Finally, subsidies stimulate ESCOs' ability to innovate, whereas competition deters innovation.

Although the innovation effects of carbon trading mechanism (CTM) have attracted considerable concern, there is still a lack of empirical research on how the CTM promotes the efficiency of green innovation in China. Therefore, this paper purposes to investigate how CTM affects the efficiency of green innovation and revels its potential paths, including industrial structure, energy structure, technological innovation, human capital, and foreign direct investment (FDI), based on panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China spanning from 2008 to 2020. SBM-DEA model is employed to calculate the efficiency of green innovation in 30 provinces and cities. We then employ the synthetic control method (SCM) to investigate the influence of the CTM on the efficiency of green innovation, and the results show that the CTM can improve the efficiency of green innovation. By using the Hausman model, several conclusions are obtained. First, the CTM has a positive effect on improving the efficiency of green innovation. Second, from 2008 to 2020, the efficiency of green innovation in China is continuously improving, although it is still imbalanced across regions. Third, the CTM can influence the efficiency of green innovation by affecting the industrial structure, energy structure, human capital, and FDI.

Global climate change is closely related to conventional energy consumption. Taking the regulations for emissions into account, this article uses a game theory approach to identify industries depending on conventional energies to reduce emissions. This paper proposes to design a suitable supervisory system for emission regulation based on limited supervisor and asymmetric production efficiency. Two different supervision mechanism, random and selected supervisions, are employed. Some interesting conclusions are achieved. Firstly, the greater the level of competition, the smaller the number of firms with emission-reduction technology (ERT) are. Interestingly, the number of firms without ERT increases faster than does the number of firms with ERT. Secondly, under the asymmetric case, the threshold value for firms with low production costs that always employ emission-reduction technology is presented. Finally, this paper proves that firms with higher production costs have greater incentives to avoid emission restriction. Based on the above conclusions, the corresponding policy implications or regulation institutions to reduce climate changes are outlined. Random inspect is optimal if firms’ efficiency information, measured by production cost, is incomplete, while selected supervise is better if efficiency information is complete.

This paper analyzes how to achieve the cost-effectiveness by initial allocation of CO2 emission permits when a single dominant firm in production market has market power in auction, and compare two prevalent allocation patterns, mixed allocation and single auction. We show how the firm with market power may manipulate the auction price, thereby this leads to fail to achieve cost-effective solution by auction unless the total permits for allocation equal to the effective emissions cap. Provided that the market power firm receives strictly positive free permits, the effective emissions cap of mixed allocation is larger than that of single auction. The production market share of dominant firm is increasing with the free permits it holds. Finally, we examine the compliance costs and welfare of mixed allocation and single auction, the result show that the former is preferred to the later when policy makers consider economic welfare without welfare cost due to CO2 emissions.

With respect to sustainable development, how to promote renewable energy is a major issue. Here, we introduce a hybrid subsidy mechanism that considers both input and output subsidies. Hybrid subsidies are analyzed with stochastic optimization approaches. An outstanding advantage of hybrid subsidies is the flexibility to adjust the intensity between the input and output subsidies. Our study shows that input-biased subsidies advance outputs and improve environmental efficiency (EE), while output-biased subsidies reduce risk and boost producer subsidy equivalents (PSEs). Therefore, the policy implication of this research is that different subsidy intensities should be employed according to preferences or social requirements.