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The global community has set intensive targets in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to better people’s lives after closing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It corresponds to the 2030 aspirations of the United Nations to enhance and promote the sustainable development of human society. The current paper explores the impact of fiscal hedging and R&D in energy Using a green-energy system in SDGs. To do this, we used TOPSIS and QARDL methodologies on a 21-year dataset of South and Southeast Asian economies from 2000 to 2020. The study results show that fiscal hedging contributes favourably to the environmental degradation of the underlying economy. Research and development (R&D) in renewables has contributed negatively to ecological degradation and SDGs in the economies of South & Southeast Asia. This study suggests policy guidelines for advanced and developing economies based on fiscal stability and technical innovation through R&D to meet SDG.

Abstract China's carbon emissions have been ranking first in the world. This study filled in the gaps in research, decomposed carbon intensity from the perspective of time, space and industry. A decoupling effort model based on factor decomposition models was constructed to analyze the driving factors of carbon emissions and economic decoupling, which builded a foundation for achieving sustainable economic development. Using the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index method (LMDI), the paper measured the carbon emission intensity of 29 provinces and cities in China from 1998 to 2019, and decomposed the decoupling effect between GDP and carbon emission on the basis of factor decomposition by tapio. The results showed that: (1) Carbon intensity declined first, then rise lightly, and finally declined steadily. For the primary industry and the tertiary industry, the carbon intensity declined steadily, while the carbon intensity increased accordingly to the overall carbon intensity. In terms of spatial evolution, the regional differences between different provinces decreased correspondingly. (2) The cumulative contribution rates of these three effects, i.e., technological progress, industrial structure and regional scale were 106.3299%, −15.1486% and 8.8188%, respectively. There were obvious differences of these cumulative contribution rates of carbon intensity among different provinces. (3) From the perspective of industrial, technological progress effect is the largest contribution for carbon intensity in the secondary industry. The Industrial structure effect mainly affects the primary and tertiary industries; and no significant difference in regional scale effect. (4) The decoupling effect gradually improved, and technological progress has played an absolute leading role in promoting the decoupling effect. Based on the research results, the key policy recommendation are put forward as follows: (1) Further improve the technological level and support clean technology enterprises. (2) Promote industrial upgrading in backward industrial provinces (3) Promote regional assistance and the introduction of high-quality foreign investment.

With rapid progress in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) theories and the up-gradation of the global market information disclosure system, enterprises have increased their attention toward relevant stakeholders and social responsibility. CSR exerts a substantial impact on the sustainable development of enterprises and markets in the economic and social fields. On the one hand, the increasingly perfect supporting facilities promote the financial growth of the entire society. While on the other hand, the profit-seeking trend of capital is also on the rise. The incongruity between the rapid progress of enterprises and the lack of social responsibility limits the benign development of the market. This study discusses the antecedents of CSR from the variable combination perspective using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. It also investigates which combination of characteristics has better CSR performance. After the configuration analysis, it is identified that four paths lead to high CSR performance. These include the market-developed type, political link type, financial performance type, and state-owned enterprise subsidy type, and the level of each type is explained in-depth. Finally, this study provides management inspiration for the government and enterprises to formulate a sound social responsibility strategy and improve CSR performance by optimizing the matching of CSR activities and business objectives.

Accurate measurement of the shadow price of carbon dioxide (CO2) is fundamental to the scientific assessment of the carbon emission reduction cost and the formulation and execution of China’s carbon emission mitigation policies. Underpinned by the directional distance function, this research uses a parametric linear programming method and a Bayes bootstrap estimation method to estimate the marginal CO2 emission reduction cost of the industrial sector in China and to quantify the related influencing factors. The results revealed that the marginal reduction cost of industrial CO2 is CNY 4565/ton. The marginal reduction cost of CO2 varies by industry, with the textile industry being the highest and the petroleum, coking and nuclear fuel processing industries the lowest. Meanwhile, an increasing number of industries are shifting to cleaner production. Furthermore, the marginal reduction cost of industrial CO2 has an “inverted U-shaped” relation with carbon intensity. Carbon emission reduction can be accomplished effectively if the carbon intensity is kept below the threshold value of 0.41 tons/CNY 10,000.

Abstract The global steel production has been growing for the last 50 years, from 200 Mt in 1950s to 1 240 Mt in 2006. Iron and steel making industry is one of the most energy-intensive industries, with an annual energy consumption of about 24 EJ, 5% of the world's total energy consumption. The steel industry accounts for 3%–4% of total world greenhouse gas emissions. Enhancing energy efficiency and employing energy saving/recovering technologies such as coke dry quechning (CDQ) and top pressure recovery turbine (TRT) can be short-term approaches to the steel industry to reduce greenhouse gas emission. The long-term approaches to achieving a significant reduction in CO2 emissions from the steel industry would be through developing and applying CO2 breakthrough technologies for iron and steel making, and through increasing use of renewable energy for iron and steel making. Thus, an overview of new CO2 breakthrough technologies for iron and steel making was made.

In this paper, we use financial data of Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2020 to explore the relation between working capital financing structure and firm value under certain monetary policy and macro economy situation. We find that when monetary policy expands, the use of aggressive working capital financing structure is conducive to value maximization; when the macroeconomic situation is good, the aggressive working capital financing structure helps to improve firm value. Further study finds that monetary policy expansion urges firms to use more short-term debt to cut capital cost, and better macroeconomic situation can cut firm’s bankrupt cost to bring down working capital financing structure and improve firm value.

AbstractMany developing countries are facing the difficulty of choosing between economic growth and energy conservation and emission reduction (ECER). China has strengthened the implementation of ECER by setting environmental accountability as the development goal of local governments, hoping to have better governance effects. To evaluate the actual intervention effect of this approach, this paper constructs panel data covering 46 countries from 1995 to 2014 and uses the difference-in-differences (DID) method and the composite control method to quantitatively analyse the policy effect. The results show that China can effectively curb energy consumption and carbon emission intensity per unit of GDP by adding ECER targets to the government’s five-year plan, which has significant effects on ECER. Furthermore, we use an intermediary mechanism to test and identify low-carbon alternatives and an ECER promotion mechanism for technological advancement. The conclusion shows that economic development is compatible with low carbon and energy consumption. Combined with China’s long-term goals for ECER, it can be considered that on the road to achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality in the future, the economy and tertiary industry should be rationally developed, the degree of urbanization should receive more attention, and the proportion of thermal power generation should be reduced.

Abstract To empirically verify whether financial risk affects global carbon emissions, this study investigates the financial risk-emission nexus by employing a global balanced panel dataset of 62 countries over the period 2003–2018. Furthermore, we explore the mediation effect of technological innovation on the financial risk-emission nexus. Fully considering potential regional heterogeneity and asymmetry, this study further analyzes the heterogeneous and asymmetric relationships among the variables, such as the difference between regional comprehensive economic partnership countries and other countries. The empirical results indicate that: (1) a mediation effect between financial risk and global carbon emissions exists; in other words, increased financial risk not only reduces global carbon emissions directly, but can also have an indirect impact in mitigating carbon emissions by promoting technological innovation; (2) the impacts of financial risk and technological innovation on global carbon emissions show significant regional heterogeneity; and (3) financial risk and technological innovation show asymmetry across different quantiles. To be specific, technological innovation and financial risk have a significant inhibitory effect on global carbon emissions only in the 10th quantile, while promoting carbon emissions in other quantiles.

Scientifically evaluating the level of low-carbon development in terms of theoretical and practical significance is extremely important to coal enterprise groups for implementing national energy-related systems. This assessment can assist in building institutional mechanisms that are conducive for the economic development of coal business cycle and energy conservation as well as promoting the healthy development of coal enterprises to realize coal scientific development and resource utilization. First, by adopting systematic analysis method, this study builds low-carbon development evaluation index system for coal enterprise groups. Second, to determine the weight serving as guideline and criteria of the index, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is applied using integrated linear weighted sum method to evaluate the level of low-carbon development of coal enterprise groups. Evaluation is also performed by coal enterprise groups, and the process comprises field analysis and evaluation. Finally, industrial policies are proposed regarding the development of low-carbon coal conglomerate strategies and measures. This study aims mainly to guide the low-carbon development of coal enterprise groups, solve the problem of coal mining and the destruction of ecological environment, support the conservation of raw materials and various resources, and achieve the sustainable development of the coal industry.