• Energy Research

AbstractAfter China's economy entered a “new normal,” their economic development model shifted from an energy‐intensive to an energy‐saving, given that China's electricity and heating industry accounts for about half of the country's energy consumption and carbon emissions. Based on the sample data from 2005 to 2020, this paper adopts the energy consumption method and the extended index decomposition model to explore carbon emissions of the electricity and heating industry in the early and late period of the economic new normal. The results show that: (1) carbon emissions from the electricity and heating industry showed a growing direction in the economic new normal period. However, compared with the early period of economic new normal, the increasing speed of carbon emissions from the electricity and heating industry slowed down significantly in the late period. This point also directly reflects that the extensive development mode of energy utilization has been alleviated after the electricity and heating industry entered the economic new normal. (2) Compared with the early period, the energy structure effect on the emission reduction was enhanced after entering the economic new normal. Meanwhile, the investment efficiency effect has changed from promoting to inhibiting. (3) Compared with the early period, the promotion impact of the investment scale effect on carbon emissions in the electricity and heating industry has no significant change after entering the economic new normal. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the emission reduction impact of the energy intensity effect is weak. This paper not only provides empirical evidence for evaluating the emission reduction effects of the Chinese electricity and heating industry before and after the economic new normal but also shares policy insights for precise emission reduction in the electricity and heating industry in the later stage of the economic new normal.

AbstractChina's economy has transtioned into the “new normal”, which demands higher standards for energy utilization efficiency. Meanwhile, the spatial distribution of China's energy consumption and economic development exhibits a significant imbalance, complicating efforts to achieve Pareto optimization of regional energy allocation efficiency. Addressing this issue, this study explores the heterogeneity of the factors influencing energy consumption in China from the dual perspectives of economic “new normal” and geographic space, using an exponential decomposition model. The results of the study show that: (1) the inhibitory effect of the energy intensity effect on the growth of regional energy consumption is differentiated, with stronger inhibitory effects in Guangdong, Jiangsu and other provinces, and weaker inhibitory effects in Hainan, Qinghai, and other provinces. Living standard effect on the regional energy consumption growth of the promotion of the effect also has differences, Jiangsu, Shandong and other provinces of the promotion of the effect is stronger, while Hainan, Qinghai, and other provinces of the promotion of the effect is weaker. (2) Population size effect on regional energy consumption growth is not consistent in the direction of the role of Guangdong, Zhejiang, and other provinces have a promotional effect and the role of the effect of the stronger, on the contrary, the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Gansu has an inhibitory effect. (3) In the late stage of the economic “new normal”, the effects of energy intensity effect, living standard effect and population size effect on the growth of energy consumption in the four regions show a weakening trend, and this weakening trend is more obvious in the northeast region. This study expands theoretical research on factors affecting energy consumption and offers practical guidance for China's government to coordinate regional energy allocation under the economic “new normal” and geographical considerations.

The present study investigates the impact of economic growth, hydropower generation, and urbanization on Malaysia’s CO2 emissions. This study applies Quantile Autoregressive Lagged (QARDL) technique for the period of 1965Q1 to 2018Q4. The Granger-causality in quantiles is applied to confirm the causal nexus among the modeled variables. The outcomes demonstrate that hydropower generation decreases the detrimental effects of CO2 emissions at the range of high quantile levels. Furthermore, urbanization, except for higher quantiles, exhibits negative impacts on CO2 emissions. Also, the QARDL coefficients confirm the presence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis from median to higher quantiles. Besides, the Granger-causality test confirms the two-way causality among CO2 emissions and hydropower generation in Malaysia’s economy and the same for the other series. The policymakers should enhance the market attractiveness of hydropower generation projects through incentives for the investors.

AbstractIn the context of China's market‐oriented transformation, the marketization of urban land transfer (MULT) plays an important role. However, the intrinsic link between MULT and carbon emissions remains unclear. This study aims to revise the assessment methodology of MULT using large‐scale land transaction record data and tested its impact on carbon emissions at the city level. The results indicate that the competitive bidding mechanism of MULT suppresses “bottom line” competition between local authorities and has beneficial effects on carbon emissions reduction. Further analysis shows that MULT has indirectly reduced carbon emissions by industrial structure optimization. The heterogeneity test showed that the effectiveness of MULT on carbon emissions varies significantly across cities with different levels of resource endowment and location. The lag effect test shows that MULT has a negative impact on carbon emissions in the current year and second year but is no longer significant in the third year. This research expands the understanding of the intrinsic link between institutional and sustainable development, providing new insights and policy rationale for mitigating the environmental crisis.

Since China has entered the economic "new normal," China's industries pay more attention to green and low-carbon development. However, the transportation industry is still one of the three industries with high carbon emissions at present. Based on this, this paper first constructed two scenarios for the early and late stages of economic "new normal." Furthermore, using the extended structural decomposition model, input-output method, and energy consumption method, this paper studied the carbon emissions status and emissions reduction effect of China's transportation industries in the early and late stages of economic "new normal." The results showed as follows. (1) Compared with the early stage of economic "new normal," the energy intensity of transportation industries and optimization of energy consumption structure played a better role in emissions reduction after entering the economic "new normal." However, the input structure effect reflecting generalized technological progress did not play a significant role. (2) Compared with the early stage of economic "new normal," low-carbon energy such as liquefied petroleum gas, natural gas, and liquefied natural gas played a more significant role in the energy structure effect with the emissions reduction effect showing an obvious enhancement trend over time after entering the economic "new normal." (3) In the early or late stage of economic "new normal," the final demand effect was the main driving factor for the growth of CO2 emissions in the transportation industry. Meanwhile, compared with the early stage of economic "new normal," the final demand effect had a stronger driving effect in the late stage of economic "new normal." In these two periods, the second industry and the third industry were the main contributors to the final demand effect. This paper provided a basic theoretical analysis basis for carbon emission control of transportation industry under the "new normal" of the Chinese economy, and also provided a realistic guidance path for the transportation industry to carry out more accurate emission reduction from the level of energy varieties on the demand side and industry on the demand side.

In recent years, blockchain technology has generally provided a wide range of application values in various fields. However, interdisciplinary research on blockchain technology and carbon trading companies is currently rare. Based on this, this paper takes the integration of blockchain technology and carbon trading companies as the background and draws on relevant theories such as blockchain technology, carbon trading mechanisms, and major technological changes to study the influencing factors of carbon trading companies applying blockchain technology by combining theoretical deduction with an empirical test. The results show that (1) the number of companies in China's eight carbon trading pilots shows an obvious regional imbalance. Among them, more companies participated in the carbon trading pilot in Shenzhen and Beijing while less in Tianjin and Hubei. Meanwhile, the participating companies in the eight carbon trading pilots are mainly concentrated in eight industries, including electric power, petrochemical, chemical, building materials, iron and steel, nonferrous metals, papermaking, and domestic civil aviation. (2) The willingness of carbon pilot companies to use blockchain technology is stronger; the time for carbon pilot companies to learn and master blockchain technology is shorter, otherwise, the longer. Therefore, priority can be given to applying blockchain technology in carbon pilot industries with strong use willingness. (3) If more companies participate in carbon trading, the easier it is for companies to learn to use blockchain technology in the early stage. Therefore, if the pilot for the application of blockchain technology is carried out in carbon trading companies, the two carbon pilots in Shenzhen and Beijing can be given priority. This paper further enriches the relatively scarce existing interdisciplinary literature on blockchain technology and carbon trading in theory and also provides guidance for the effective application of blockchain technology by carbon trading companies in reality.

The excessive growth of carbon emissions (CO2E) from industrial energy use not only exacerbates global warming and severely curbs the sustainable development of the economy and society. As a high energy-consuming sector second only to the fossil energy division, the power and heavy division, China's chemical industry should have received more attention for its CO2E. However, there are limited literatures on energy CO2E in China's chemical sector at present. Based on this fact, this current paper uses the energy utilization approach, the input–output analysis approach, and the extended structural decomposition method to evaluate the energy-related CO2E of China's chemical sector from 2007 to 2017. (1) China's chemical sector energy-related CO2E showed a trend of first growth and then a slow decline, demonstrating that the rapid growth of China's chemical sector energy-related CO2E has been effectively controlled; However, it should be noted that the chemical industry is still dominated by high-CO2E energy-related CO2E at the current stage. (2) Input structure and energy intensity effects have a reduced influence on the growth of energy-related CO2E in China's chemical sector. This is due to upgrading energy use technology and optimizing the generalized technology progress rate in the chemical sector. (3) Energy structure and final demand effects have encouraged the growth of the chemical sector's energy-related CO2E. It shows that the industrial system's demand for chemical products is constantly expanding, and the chemical products still have the characteristics of high carbonization. Also, the chemical sector's supply-side energy utilization structure has not been significantly enhanced.

Excessive carbon emissions from energy consumption seriously restrict China's sustainable development and eco-environmental protection. Although the carbon emissions from the construction industry are less than that of the power, transportation, and manufacturing sectors, the carbon emissions released by the construction industry cannot be ignored due to its extensive development trend of high energy consumption and low efficiency. Based on this, this paper studies energy-related carbon emissions and emissions reduction of China's construction industry from 2007 to 2017 by adopting the input-output analysis method, energy consumption method, and structural decomposition model. The results show that within the sample range: (1) The optimization of the construction industry energy consumption structure has a significant reduction effect on the growth of energy carbon emissions from the construction industry in China, and the reduction effect has shown an increasing trend over time. However, it should be noted that in this sample range, the optimization of energy consumption structure in the construction industry is mainly reflected in the decrease of the proportion of high-carbon energy consumption such as raw coal, while low-carbon energy such as natural gas has not played a significant role. Therefore, the future energy optimization space of China's construction industry is still huge. (2) Energy intensity effect and input structure effect have a positive inhibitory effect on carbon emission growth of the construction industry, and the inhibitory effect of energy intensity effect is stronger than that of input structure effect. It shows that in the sample range, the generalized technological progress and energy efficiency of the construction industry have been better optimized and improved. (3) Except for 2015-2017, the final demand effect in other intervals has a positive effect on the growth of carbon emissions in the construction industry, and the secondary and tertiary industries play a major role in the final demand effect. It shows that the total demand for the construction industry in various industries still maintains a growth trend. This paper provides a theoretical analysis basis and practical guidance for China's construction industry to carry out more accurate and efficient emission reduction from the supply-side energy varieties and demand-side industry level, and further enriches the existing research on carbon emissions of the construction industry from the perspective of input-output analysis.