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Automobile sector is one of the important parts of the transportation industry. China's booming auto sector has also brought huge energy consumption, and energy consumption in the automobile sector will continue to increase with the further development of China's economy. Urbanization is a complex process of modernization, and it may be an important reason for the change in automobile energy consumption. According to the current literature, the impact of urbanization may exist as a positive or negative mechanism. Based on the sample of 279 cities in 31 provinces of China from 2003 to 2015, this paper analyzes how urbanization affects automobile energy consumption in the disparity of income, and then it also further explores the heterogeneity of automobile energy consumption in different regions. The conclusion of this paper shows that considering the income disparity, the effect of urbanization on automobile energy consumption increased first and then decreased. The regions with relatively low automobile energy consumption will gradually catch up with the high energy consumption regions, and automobile energy consumption in each region will not converge to its own steady state.

China's manufacturing industry consumes more energy than the total amounts of Germany, Britain, France, Spain and Japan combined, and has a substantial impact on energy conservation and emissions reduction. This paper investigates the influence mechanism of economic infrastructure on the energy consumption and energy intensity of the sector. Using the China's provincial data during the period 2003–2016, the profit function is applied to incorporate infrastructure into the input-output system, and to avoid the endogenous problems caused by the reverse causal relationship between energy consumption and infrastructure construction. The empirical results indicate that economic infrastructure construction will increase energy consumption and reduce the energy intensity in the long term. Although the energy consumption effect of infrastructure in the central and western regions is less than that in the eastern region, the energy intensity of the western region declines the most due to the infrastructure construction. Based on the results of this paper, some policy implications are discussed. This paper also offers some targeted policy recommendations to improve policy design of the government.

In order to promote the development of new energy buses more smoothly, a random survey of public perception on new energy vehicles and willingness to pay for new energy bus fares is conducted in four first-tier cities in China. We design two sets of questions in the survey and adopt a sample selection model to correct the possible sample selection bias in the estimation of willingness-to-pay for new energy fares. The results show that firstly in the zero willingness to pay samples, very few of them are with genuine zero, the others all being protest respondents. Second, the sample selection model indicates that the sample selection bias is positively significant in the estimation of willingness to pay. Third, income, people's knowledge about new energy vehicles, the degree of recognition of the role of new energy vehicle in improving urban air quality, and views on air quality influence willingness to pay more for new energy bus fares positively. We propose that pricing new energy bus fares higher is reasonable and more knowledge concerning new energy vehicles should be disseminated to the public.

Although China's food industry is not energy-intensive, its rapid development has brought enormous challenges to the realization of the energy-saving goal due to its huge scale. So the industry must reduce its energy intensity as much as possible. This paper uses a comprehensive decomposition analysis to study the energy intensity changes in China's food industry between 2000 and 2013, and draws the following conclusions: (1) technological progress have the most significant impact on reducing energy intensity, reducing it by 70.2%; (2) technical efficiency change hinders the energy intensity decline, which in turn increases it by 18.4%; (3) the substitution of capital for energy is conducive to the decline of energy intensity; (4) the government's industrial policy has played a role in energy conservation, but there is room for improvement. Therefore, this paper suggests that: Firstly, the R&D investment in production and management technology should continue to increase, and more importance should be attached to technology diffusion and transfer between regions. Secondly, more effective incentives and stricter constraints should be implemented for the food industry. Thirdly, the planning of the industry layout should be adapted to regional advantages, and targeted policies should be carried out in different regions.

Municipal solid waste in China has increased rapidly in recent years with urbanization and economic development. The establishment of affordable, effective and truly sustainable waste management is a key point for the development of urban areas. However, as a renewable energy, the cost-benefit of supporting and the environmental performance for waste incineration power are seldom discussed. This paper discusses the current situation of waste incineration power industry in China and analyzes the required subsidies and emission reductions. The results show that waste incineration power needs relatively less financial support and perform well on emission reduction. Main obstacles to the development of waste incineration have also been investigated from the perspective of government, enterprises and local residents. Lastly, some suggestions are offered on how to tackle these issues. For instance: more regulation on waste classification; to integrate the informal workers into formal municipal waste management system; to communicate more effectively to the public to dispel general misunderstanding; application of the waste heat from cogeneration plants to local heat supply or central heat supply system.

Analysis of CO2 emission has attracted more attention due to increasing environmental awareness. As a pillar of the national economy, the CO2 emissions of the metallurgical industry continually increased during 2000–2015 and reached around 3208.65 million tons in 2015. Thus, research on the CO2 emission performance of the metallurgical industry is significant for achieving binding emission reduction targets in China's 13th Five-Year Plan as well as constructing clean and low carbon energy system based on the directives of the 19th CPC National Congress. Taking regional heterogeneity into consideration, we construct a Metafrontier Malmquist CO2 Emissions Performance Index (MMCPI) to conducts a multi-dimensional analysis of the CO2 emissions performance in metallurgical industry of China, focusing on the CO2 emission efficiency, the main influencing factors of carbon performance and CO2 emission reduction potentials. Based on the aforementioned analysis, the paper finds that technological progress change was the main factor contributing to the improvement of the CO2 emissions efficiency of the metallurgical industry. Under the meta-frontier, Central and Western China still have a CO2 emissions reduction potential of 75.3% and 81.1% correspondingly. Under the group-frontier, the lowest reduction potential in Eastern, Central and Western China is in Jiangsu, Hubei and Chongqing respectively.

Energy and CO2 efficiency play important roles in promoting energy conservation and CO2 emission reduction in China's commercial sector. This paper applies the non-radial directional distance function to evaluate energy and CO2 efficiency in China's commercial sector, and also constructs a non-radial Malmquist energy and CO2 performance index to measure the dynamic performance of energy and CO2 efficiency in the sector. The results indicate that energy and CO2 efficiency in China's commercial sector is generally low, and there are significant regional differences and enormous energy-savings and CO2 emission reduction potentials. Eastern China has the highest energy and CO2 efficiency of all the regions. From the perspective of dynamic performance, energy and CO2 efficiency performance in China's commercial sector improved by 3.8% annually over the period 1995–2015. Technological progress is the major driving factor improving energy and CO2 efficiency in the sector. The technology gap changes (TGC) index which is less than 1 implies that the technological gap between the global frontier and the intertemporal frontier has increased, and does not help to improve energy and CO2 efficiency performance. Considering regional differences, policy makers should set both short- and long-term goals to achieve environmental goals in China's commercial sector.

China is currently the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2). Vigorously developing new energy sources has become an important way to reduce CO2 emissions. Therefore, more and more scholars have studied effective ways to promote the development of new energy industry. However, most of the existing research use single-equation linear models or static models to study the driving forces of the new energy industry. This not only ignores the large number of dynamic relationships between economic variables, but also produces endogeneity problems. In order to overcome the shortcomings of existing research, this paper uses vector autoregressive model to study the new energy industry. The results show that energy consumption structure has a positive effect on the new energy industry in the short run, but the effect is limited in the long run. The impact of the agriculture industry is gradually narrowing over time due to the gradual reduction of crop acreage. However, the influence of economic growth is positive both in the short and long run. This is due to the gradual optimization of industrial structure. Technological progress produces a similar impact, owing to continued investment in research and development funding as well as research and development personnel.

We conduct a rigorous and systematic empirical study on the effect of “Ten Cities, Ten Thousand New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) project” on urban air quality. After examining the applicable conditions of the "difference-in-differences" method, we demonstrate that this project meets the parallel trend assumptions, randomness assumptions and homogeneity hypothesis in terms of the impact on air quality, represented by urban air nitrogen dioxide concentration. Thus, during the whole promotion period, the promotion of new energy vehicles can reduce the concentration of nitrogen dioxide in urban air, but the effect is not significant every year of the promotion. The effect of the project evolves over time. The fact that the effect of reducing the concentration of urban air nitrogen dioxide is small is relevant to the small number of new energy vehicles, because the entire project did not attain the expected target. As a result, the promotion of new energy vehicles has become an option to improve urban air quality, especially by reducing air nitrogen dioxide concentration.

Energy consumption propels economic growth but the level of CO2 emissions associated with a fossil-dominated energy structure raises concerns for the fight against climate change. To draw consensus, this study develops a translog-causality-based model in order to study causation between electricity, natural gas, petroleum, and economic growth in Egypt. In addition, the models’ results are used to estimate the substitution possibilities between various energy pairs and to subsequently test the CO2 mitigation benefits arising from fuel substitution. Results support a bidirectional relationship between all energy types and economic growth in Egypt and suggest, also, that these energy types are substitutes. Although technical progress is estimated to be a bit slow (varying between 4.5% and 7.5%), there appears to be substantial CO2 emissions mitigation benefits from fuel substitution amounting to reductions in the range of 1.5 and 2.2 million metric tons under a 5% investment scenario and 2.5 and 4.5 million metric tons under a 10% investment scenario. These results have broader implications for energy conservation policies and industrial merger policies in developing countries. Moreover, by studying technical change, insights are provided on future CO2 mitigation potential driven by energy efficiency.

Improving energy efficiency is recognized as a cost-effective way to conserve energy, it is also considered as a primary instrument in many energy policies. Nevertheless, efficiency improvements could spawn unintended rebound effects, which could offset the expected energy conservation and its associated CO2 reduction. This paper therefore intends to investigate the rebound effect in China's road transport system over the sample period 2003–2013. Utilizing a city-level dataset and a stochastic frontier rebound effect model, we found that there was considerable room to improve the fuel efficiency further in China's eight economic regions. Meanwhile, we also found the occurrence of rebound effects that the magnitudes of which ranged from ranged from 7.2% to 82.2%. The rebound magnitudes were shown to be negatively associated with the level of retail fuel prices, indicating that imposing carbon taxes might be a favorable way to downgrade the rebound effect. All these imply the necessity to design an appropriate policy that could facilitate efficiency improvements as well as attain CO2 reduction purpose.

Electric vehicles are considered to be one of the most important ways for China to solve a series of energy problems such as urban smog, energy supply security and turning to green development. With the powerful support provided by the government, China has become the world's largest electric vehicle market and continues to maintain a high-speed growth. This paper examines the factors that may affect the public's purchasing intention of electric vehicles via a survey. An electric vehicle purchasing intention model is proposed based on the literature review and the reality in China. The model takes into consideration a number of demographic characteristic factors and attitude factors. A survey was conducted in China's four largest cities which include: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Based on the survey data, the paper examines the public's cognition of each influencing factor and analyses the impacts of these factors. The results reveal that attitude factors such as network externality, price acceptability, government subsidies, vehicle performance, environmental concerns, and demographic characteristics such as gender, age and marital status have significant impact on respondents’ willingness to purchase electric vehicles. The finding of this paper provides constructive advices to diverse stakeholders.

Understanding the heterogeneity and influencing factors of renewable energy investment between enterprises can help to evaluate existing policies and provide guidance for future subsidy policies. This paper investigates how the relationship between government subsidies and renewable energy investment depends on enterprise size and relaxes the linear relationship in the traditional empirical model. Based on firm-level panel data from China, only when the enterprise size exceeds a certain threshold value can it have a significant effect. The effect of government subsidies on renewable energy investment is on the rise. However, its speed tends to decrease with the growth of enterprise size. Besides, ownership concentration and enterprise growth significantly promote investment in renewable energy. The empirical results show that the effect of government subsidies has a significant enhancement in 2016, which may be due to high frequency and high government subsidies in the early stage. These findings are robustly verified. Finally, some specific policy suggestions are put forward.

China's automobile sector has entered a period of rapid development, and has resulted in huge oil consumption. Oil price fluctuation will change consumers’ behavior. Understanding how changes in oil price affect the use and purchase of private cars is valuable to formulating price and emissions mitigation policies. In this paper, we use survey data from four cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and a total of 715 responses were deemed used for the analyses. The results show that the sensitivity of low-income consumers to oil price is significantly higher than high-income consumers. Compared with low-income consumers, high-income consumers would “ Drive Less ” only when oil price rise to a higher level. In addition, for the high-income consumers with a potential purchase intention, only when oil price rise to more than 10 Yuan will they change the purchase intension and choose a lower-emission car or as we called “ Purchase Lower ”.

Stimulated by low labor cost and loose environmental regulations, China's industrial exports have benefited significantly since joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, the extensive growth model in the past several decades has led to environmental degradation. China is now shifting her development pattern to a more sustainable model. Using a hybrid input-output model, this paper found that total energy coefficients fell sharply between 1997 and 2002, and 2007 and 2012. The total energy consumption and CO2 emission embodied in China's industrial exports grew by more than 100% from 2002 to 2007, with little variation from 2007 to 2012. Subsequently, Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index (MLPI) is employed to assess the green productivity growth in the sector. The decomposition of the MLPI is further conducted. This suggests that efficiency changes from 2002 to 2007 and 2007 to 2012 are lower than 1, indicating that technical change is the main contributor to MLPI. Finally, policy implications are provided with emphasis on dissemination of new conservation technologies.

The Carbon Emission Trading Scheme is generally considered an important market-oriented environmental policy tool aiming at carbon abatement. Therefore, the government and policymakers should focus on the positive role it plays. In September 2020, China proposed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Based on the background of carbon neutrality, this paper, therefore, examines the policy effectiveness of carbon trading in two stages by taking the natural experiment of China's pilot as a case. The first stage constructs two indicators to represent the performance of energy utilization and carbon emissions by employing the global DEA, namely the total-factor carbon performance index and the energy-carbon performance index. The second stage discusses the policy effect of carbon trading by using the synthetic control method to construct unobservable counterfactual paths. The paper found that carbon trading can significantly improve carbon/energy-carbon performance. This empirical work identifies the role of the carbon trading scheme in promoting energy conservation and emission reduction, which is regarded as an effective policy tool to promote carbon neutrality. The placebo test also confirmed that the results are robust and significant. Finally, some policy suggestions are provided for achieving carbon neutrality worldwide based on these findings.

Energy cooperation is a major part of China's Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). In particular, power generation projects play a significant role, especially coal power projects. In spite of its substantial impacts on China and the world, research on the BRI coal power projects is scarce. To provide a better picture of the BRI coal power cooperation, we analyze the evolutions, rationales, challenges, and prospects. Our finding reveals that the BRI coal power projects generate opportunity for the BRI participants, as coal energy can render electricity generation more efficient in these countries, mostly from developing world, with larger and cleaner plants, providing flexibility for greater integration of renewables. However, given sustainability concerns regarding coal power, our article suggests that the transition toward low-carbon energy systems should be pursued in the long-term with more focus on promoting innovations in energy efficiency, energy storage, and cleaner energies like gas, wind, and solar.

The mining industry is one of the basic industries in China that ensures energy security. However, the mining industry's energy consumption is huge. It is, therefore, significant to improve the mining industry's energy and carbon performance. This paper adopts the non-radial directional distance function (NDDF) to measure the energy and carbon performance (ECP) of China's mining industry. It uses the metafrontier Malmquist index (MML) to disassemble the mining industry's ECP into three components to explore the driving factors during the 11th and 12th five-year plan. The empirical results reflect that although the mining industry's ECP is improved during two plan periods, technological progress does not have an obvious contribution to the ECP improvement. This means the mining sector lacks the innovation effect. As for policymaking, the government should support the mining sector's technological innovation, reduce surplus capacity, and open mineral markets.

China is undergoing an energy-market reform while the residential sector remains the most prudent for its close relationship with livelihood. Based on the Chinese household energy consumption survey, a demand function is established to estimate the determinants of residential electricity consumption. With a micro-model, the changes in welfare and redistribution under different scenarios are estimated. From the results, the current subsidy is ineffective; each high-income family receives the cross-subsidy of 35.65 CNY per month, which is 3 times of the low-income family. Price increment leads to less subsidy and deadweight loss but a loss in welfare, and the adjustment in the price on the 1st block is more conducive to the subsidy decline. With a similar overall effect, the non-uniform increase is more effective in subsidy redistribution by widening the price gradients between IBP (increasing block price) blocks and is recommended. Considering the burden of subsidy, the government and the power grid companies are suggested to clarify the pricing scheme to help the public get informed, and thereby, win the support of the public in the energy reform.

As one of China's mainstay and six major energy-intensive industries, the nonferrous metals industry faces the intense contradiction between economic growth and energy & environment constraints. Technological progress does not only realize the energy savings, but also causes rebound effect by promoting output growth. Although the rebound effect is an important topic, there is still very little empirical research that focuses on the nonferrous metals industry in China. Using the LMDI method and the total factor productivity model (to calculate parameters), we estimate the size of the rebound effect in China's nonferrous metals industry over the period 1985–2014. According to the results, the average rebound effect is approximately 83.02% with a downward trend, which indicates that most of the expected energy savings are mitigated. The rebounds with a strong fluctuation are comparatively discussed in various periods, suggesting that China cannot count only on technological progress to save energy and reduce emission. Furthermore, the government should apply economic instruments, such as energy pricing mechanism reform, resource tax, and carbon tax, as supplements to realize the targets of energy conservation and emission reduction. Additionally, optimizing sub-sector structure and promoting substitution also play a significant role in the mitigation of the rebound effect.

China's energy resources reserves are concentrated on the central and western regions. Meanwhile, the major energy demand is distributed in the eastern region. Large scale of cross-regional electricity transmission is implemented to guarantee the power supply. The long distance electricity transmission (LDET) cost is an essential component of the final detail price. This paper proposes a new method to evaluate the real cost of LDET, which mainly focuses on the price mark-up between the electricity exporter and importer. A weighted least square regression model is applied to evaluate the influence of the factors that could impact the real operating cost of the LDET. Furthermore, we apply the LDET cost model to evaluate the synthesize cost of renewable energy, and find the current renewable policy of China is inefficient.

This paper depicts the natural gas price control behavior of the Chinese government in an imperfect competition market structure using a static CGE model. It simulates the effect of changes in natural gas price control policy on carbon emission, and the economic effects in view of demand side and supply side. Based on the above, we also analyze the carbon emission mechanism from economic and energy structure perspective. The results show that: an increase in natural gas price can reduce carbon emission, or tends to cause a long-term decline in the surplus profit rate of the natural gas industry. Moreover, the increase in natural gas price may raise the CPI, and reduce actual GDP and residents’ welfare. On the contrary, a decrease in natural gas price may reduce CPI and enhance resident welfare. However, the long-term actual GDP will not increase, but carbon emission will increase and the surplus profit rate of the natural gas industry may reduce in the short term and increase in the long term. On the other hand, Both increase and decrease in natural gas prices may result in a decrease of the actual GDP level in the long term. The elimination of price control in natural gas supply may increase actual GDP and residents’ welfare and reduce CPI. Meanwhile, it may increase carbon emissions and improve the profitability of the natural gas industry.

With the rapid development of China's economy and the speed of urbanization, China's automobile sector has experienced rapid development. The rapid development of the automobile sector has increased energy consumption. According to the results of this paper, automobile energy consumption accounted for about 10.73% of total energy consumption in China in 2015, about 3.6 times the proportion a decade ago. With the deterioration of urban traffic conditions, relying on expanding the amount of vehicles and city road network cannot solve the problem. Urban rail transit is energy-saving and less-polluting, uses less space, has large capacity, and secure. Urban rail transit, according to the principle of sustainable development, is a green transportation system and should be especially adopted for large and medium-sized cities. The paper uses the binary choice model (Probit and Logit) to analyze the main factors influencing the development of rail transit in Chinese cities, and whether automobile energy consumption is the reason for the construction of urban rail transit. Secondly, we analyze the influence of urban rail transit on automobile energy consumption using DID model. The results indicate that the construction of urban rail traffic can restrain automobile energy consumption significantly, with continuous impact in the second year.

Automobile exhaust emissions have been one of the serious air pollution sources in most Chinese cities and the adoption of new energy vehicles (NEVs) can solve this problem to some extent. In this context, NEVs can be seen as a kind of public good, part of whose value cannot be reflected in a market price. This paper estimates the environmental values of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and studies the influencing factors based on a survey conducted in China's four biggest and developed cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Contingent valuation method (CVM) and the ordered Probit model are employed to achieve the objective. The results show that the least average environmental values of a BEV are 30.60 thousand CNY in the four cities. People with higher income, already having private cars, knowing more about BEVs, thinking that BEVs can improve air quality or with higher levels of education are willing to pay more. Therefore, the policymakers should take the positive WTP of consumers for the environmental effects of BEVs into consideration when pricing the BEVs and reconsider the existing subsidies to BEVs.

China is undergoing rapid industrialization and urbanization, with consequent dramatic increase in energy demand. Given energy scarcity, environmental pollution, energy security and energy cost constraints, energy conservation will be the major strategy in China's transition to a low-carbon economy. Since the metallurgy industry is a main sector of energy consumption, the efficiency of energy conservation in this industry will affect the future prospects of energy savings. This paper analyzes the energy conservation potential of China's metallurgy industry. First, seemingly unrelated regression method is applied to investigate the relationship between energy relative price, R&D input, enterprise ownership structure, enterprise scale and energy intensity of the metallurgy industry. Then, based on the SUR results, we use the scenario analysis method to predict energy consumption and savings potential in the industry in different scenarios. This paper provides references for China's government and metallurgy industry in formulating relevant energy conservation policies.

China is currently the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide. Considered as a large agricultural country, carbon emission in China’s agriculture sector keeps on growing rapidly. It is, therefore, of great importance to investigate the driving forces of carbon dioxide emissions in this sector. The traditional regression estimation can only get “average” and “global” parameter estimates; it excludes the “local” parameter estimates which vary across space in some spatial systems. Geographically weighted regression embeds the latitude and longitude of the sample data into the regression parameters, and uses the local weighted least squares method to estimate the parameters point–by–point. To reveal the nonstationary spatial effects of driving forces, geographically weighted regression model is employed in this paper. The results show that economic growth is positively correlated with emissions, with the impact in the western region being less than that in the central and eastern regions. Urbanization is positively related to emissions but produces opposite effects pattern. Energy intensity is also correlated with emissions, with a decreasing trend from the eastern region to the central and western regions. Therefore, policymakers should take full account of the spatial nonstationarity of driving forces in designing emission reduction policies.

Low energy and carbon efficiency and widespread market segmentation are two stylized facts of China's regional economies. This paper evaluates energy and CO2 emissions performance using a newly developed non-radial directional distance function, and China's regional integration is investigated using a price approach. The study points to evidence that: (1) most provinces do not perform efficiently in terms of energy use and CO2 emissions with performance gaps among regions becoming larger, indicating regional segmentation; (2) magnitude of regional integration has increased dramatically, while China's eastern provinces are less integrated in domestic side due to their convenience to international openness; (3) regional integration has significant and robust positive effects on energy and CO2 emissions performance with over 70% of effects coming from artificial barriers, rather than geographical distance; (4) international openness is also beneficial for promoting energy and CO2 emissions performance, but cannot substitute for regional integration because of China's specialization in energy-intensive manufacturing in the global economy. Based on the empirical findings, we suggest that central government should continue to encourage regional integration given that local governments have incentives to fragment because it is a way of promoting energy and CO2 emissions performance and stimulating economy at the same time., Highlights • NDDF method is applied to evaluate China's regional energy and carbon performance. • Difficulties in identifying NDDF using parametric approach are discussed. • Panel data of China's regional integration using the price approach is constructed. • Local protectionism is particularly identified by filtering effects of geography. • World trade cannot substitute domestic integration for improving energy efficiency.

China is now the world's largest carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter, and the government is under tremendous pressure to reduce CO2 emissions. The heavy industry sector is the largest contributor to the growth of CO2 emissions. Investigating the driving factors of this industry's CO2 emissions has important practical value. This paper applies the geographically weighted regression model to survey this industry's CO2 emissions. Empirical results show that urbanization exerts a heterogeneous impact on CO2 emissions across provinces and regions. This is mainly due to the differences in urban real estate and transportation infrastructure investments. Economic growth drives CO2 emissions, and this effect varies significantly by region and province on account of the differences in fixed-asset investment. It is more reasonable for local governments to develop emerging economies based on their specific conditions. Energy efficiency has the highest impact on CO2 emissions in the eastern region, because of the differences in R&D personnel investment and the number of patents granted. The energy consumption structure has the largest impact on CO2 emissions in the eastern region since it consumes more coal. Environmental regulations have a greater impact on CO2 emissions in the western region due to the differences in investment for industrial pollution control.

There are cross subsidies in China's power industry and there is a gap between supply cost and the sales price of electricity to residents and enterprises. Enterprises pay for part of residents' electricity bills. As cross subsidies always have been criticized, this paper simulates counterfactual scenarios of removing cross subsidy by applying a dynamic recursive computable general equilibrium model. Based on the scenario analysis, the elimination of cross subsidy will have positive impact on economic performance, but negative on CO2 mitigation, industrial structure, and social welfare. Eliminating cross subsidies can reduce commodity prices, improve the competitiveness of enterprises, especially power-intensive enterprises. However, China is somehow an export-oriented country. Only a part of the benefits of the decrease in the product price is obtained by domestic households. Maybe removing cross subsidies is not a good policy in this kind of countries. However, under the background of power system reform, cross subsidy may not last long, and the price will not be regulated. With the marketization of electricity trading, appropriate imposed environmental tax or carbon tax will be more conducive to China's low-carbon development.

Reforming subsidies for fossil fuels is a challenging prospect for many governments. The impact of such a reform on households is a major concern for the government. This paper investigates the heterogeneous impacts of eliminating energy subsidies on households in China from direct and indirect perspectives. The results of the direct effects show that the removal of energy subsidies, particularly for removing electricity and gas subsidies, has a greater negative impact on the poor than on the rich. From an indirect perspective, this article shows that the lower the per capita disposable income, the higher the proportion of consumption to disposable income, and the greater the indirect impact of eliminating subsidies. Meanwhile, the impact is not only related to household income but consumer goods. Moreover, the indirect effects of eliminating subsidies on households differ across energy types. Specifically, eliminating electricity subsidies has the greatest effect on households, followed by transportation fuel and gas. We suggest that targeted supportive measures need to be taken towards the implementation of subsidy reform, particularly in countries with greater inequality, to minimize the negative effects on the poor.

China is already the largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world. This paper adopts provincial panel data from 1990 to 2014 and employs quantile regression model to investigate the influencing factors of China's CO 2 emissions. The results show that economic growth plays a dominant role in the growth of CO 2 emissions due to massive fixed–asset investment and export trade. The influences of energy intensity on the lower 10th and upper 90th quantile provinces are stronger than those in the 25th–50th quantile provinces because of big differences in R&D expenditure and human resources distribution. The impact of urbanization increases continuously from the lower 10th quantile provinces to the 10th–25th, 25th–50th, 50th–75th, 75th–90th and upper 90th quantile provinces, owing to the differences in R&D personnel, real estate development and motor–vehicle ownership. The effect of industrialization on the upper 90th quantile provinces is greater than those on other quantile provinces on account of the differences in the industrial scale and the development of the building industry. Thus, the heterogeneity effects of influencing factors on different quantile provinces should be taken into consideration when discussing the mitigation of CO 2 emissions in China.

Enhancing energy technology innovation performance, which is widely measured by energy technology patents through energy technology research and development (R&D) activities, is a fundamental way to implement energy conservation and emission abatement. This study analyzes the effects of R&D investment activities, economic growth, and energy price on energy technology patents in 30 provinces of China over the period 1999–2013. Several unit root tests indicate that all the above variables are generated by panel unit root processes, and a panel cointegration model is confirmed among the variables. In order to ensure the consistency of the estimators, the Fully-Modified OLS (FMOLS) method is adopted, and the results indicate that R&D investment activities and economic growth have positive effects on energy technology patents while energy price has a negative effect. However, the panel error correction models indicate that the cointegration relationship helps to promote economic growth, but it reduces R&D investment and energy price in the short term. Therefore, market-oriented measures including financial support and technical transformation policies for the development of low-carbon energy technologies, an effective energy price mechanism, especially the targeted fossil-fuel subsidies and their die away mode are vital in promoting China's energy technology innovation.

This study estimates output and substitution elasticities of renewable energy and nonrenewable energy for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and discusses implications for expanding the former. The results show that nonrenewable energy promises greater benefits for ECOWAS economic transition, with output elasticities averaging between 0.052–0.579 and −0.055 to 0.223 for nonrenewable energy and renewable energy respectively. Overall estimated technological progress is low (−0.5% to 2.6%); the bulk coming from input efficiency. Substitution elasticities (0.02–0.94) suggest potential for switching towards renewable energy. Notwithstanding, scale, economics and sitting problems inherent in renewable power generation challenge the opportunities for energy substitution. A sustainable policy solution, therefore, appears to be one favoring scaled and efficient electricity generation from fossil energy in the short-run with a gradual switch towards renewable power in the long-run. In general, the applied model provides insights that energy efficiency enhances sustainable growth by propelling technological advancement especially when technical change is scale-biased and factor-augmenting. The study also provides insights that impacts of exogenous shocks to inputs are temporary, and hence, do not jeopardize efforts aimed at scaling output through increased and efficient use of labor, capital and energy; especially nonrenewable energy.

Studies have indicated that there exists a relatively stable and positive correlation between electricity consumption and economic growth and there should not be a large deviation between them. However, the deviation between electricity consumption and economic growth in China during the Asian Financial Crisis and Global Economic Crisis sparks intense debates. We attempt to explain the deviation from the perspective of inventory investment adjustment in the business cycle using the SVAR model in this paper. The results show that the effects of inventory investment adjustment shock and electricity consumption structure shock on the deviation are positive but tend to be negative for electricity efficiency shock. The results of historical decomposition of these shocks also show that the inventory investment adjustment shock is the main factor that influences the deviation during the Global Economic Crisis. Economic fluctuation in the short term can not change the economic development pattern and the characteristics of electricity demand. Once the economy returns to stable growth, the deviation between electricity consumption and economic growth will shrink and disappear soon.

Identifying the key influencing factors of CO2 emissions in China's iron and steel industry is vital for mitigating its emissions and formulating effective environmental protection measures. Most of the existing researches utilized time series data to investigate the driving factors of the industry's CO2 emission at the national level, but regional differences have not been given appropriate attention. This paper adopts provincial panel data from 2000 to 2013 and panel data models to examine the key driving forces of CO2 emissions at the regional levels in China. The results show that industrialization dominates the industry's CO2 emissions, but its effect varies across regions. The impact of energy efficiency on CO2 emissions in the eastern region is greater than in the central and western regions because of a huge difference in R&D investment. The influence of urbanization has significant regional differences due to the heterogeneity in human capital accumulation and real estate development. Energy structure has large potential to mitigate CO2 emissions on account of increased R&D investment in energy-saving technology and expanded clean energy use. Hence, in order to effectively achieve emission reduction, local governments should consider all these factors as well as regional heterogeneity in formulating appropriate mitigation policies.

China is undergoing a market-oriented reform in energy and the residential sector will be involved in the near future. The analysis of energy poverty is crucial in breaking the illusion of the dilemma between enhancing energy efficiency and controlling poverty. Based on Chinese residential energy consumption survey, we firstly estimated the energy poverty in China by the “10% indicator” and “LIHC indicators”, and then proposed a “minimum end-use” method to classify the energy-poor households into lifeline and consumption energy poverty. Results show that energy poverty exists in China at the proportion of 18.9%, and 46% of the energy-poor houses are in short of modern energy consumption and are sensitive to tariffs, with a level of electricity consumption lower than the basic demand. The energy poverty rate is highest in central China, while the lifeline energy poor are relatively concentrated in the western region. In terms of public policy, we suggest focusing on heterogeneity by considering different groups of households when implementing energy efficiency measures, and targeting more on the consumption energy poor in poverty alleviation. We also suggest paying particular attention to targeting households with low income by supporting practices such as coupons for energy consumption and appliance purchasing.

Under the background of removing the subsidies for the new energy vehicles step by step and increasing the subsidies for the charging facilities in China, getting a comprehensive understanding on public's perception and attitudes towards new energy vehicles and charging facilities is significant to the policymakers. To fulfil these goals, we design and perform a random survey in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the four first-tier cities in China from July 2019 to December 2019. In the survey, we not only investigate the public's attitudes to new energy vehicles but also ask the willingness to pay (WTP) for the use of charging facilities. We find that those persons who are male, younger or having higher family monthly income are willing to pay more for the use of charging facilities. If the interviewee has better knowledge about the new energy vehicles or considers that the new energy vehicles can improve the air quality, he/she also would like to pay more. Finally, the WTP for the charging facilities is estimated to be 0.836 yuan/kWh extra and WTP for different group of interviewees is also analyzed. Therefore, in the initial development of charging facilities, subsidies are necessary but they should be removed later.

Given China's economic transformation and upgrading process, the green development of commercial sector is more and more important. Based on the trans-log cost function, this paper calculates the inter-factor and inter-fuel substitution effects in China's commercial sector from 1980 to 2016. Besides, the paper further analyzes the driving factors of the dynamic changes in energy intensity and the impact of carbon taxation in China's commercial sector. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Capital, labor, and energy in China's commercial sector negatively correlate with their prices, and the self-price elasticities of energy, labor, and capital decline in turn. (2) The relationship between labor and capital is substitutional, and the same relationship is found when after considering labor and energy, and that between energy and capital is complementary. (3) Demand for energy sources negatively correlates with their prices, and there exist complementary relationships between energy sources. (4) Technical effects and substitution effects can effectively promote the decline of energy intensity in China's commercial sector. (5) Implementing a 50 RMB/tonne carbon taxation will lead to 5.50% energy savings and 6.21% CO2 reduction.

Understanding the convergence patterns of energy intensity and the drivers leading to the club convergence are of great significance for local governments to implement targeted policies to improve energy efficiency. With this in mind, we begin with the collection of energy consumption data of 193 Chinese cities at prefecture level or above, then we adopt the log t-test and clustering algorithm to investigate convergence characteristics of energy intensity. Besides, the Ordered Probit model is adopted to investigate the drivers that affect the formulation of convergent club. We identify four convergent clubs among total 193 cities, and these clubs show great differences in energy intensity. Marketization degree, population density, foreign direct investment, resource endowment, and industrial structure are recognized as the drivers of the formation of convergence clubs. This paper adds more evidence to understand the energy intensity gap, we propose that upgrading the industrial structure, exerting economic assemble advantage, enhancing the level of opening up, and improving the marketization level are favorable measures to reduce energy intensity.

China is the largest emerging economy and electricity consumer in the world. Despite the rapid increase in residential electricity consumption, retail residential electricity price in China remained at a low level, leading to large amounts of cross-subsidies. To address this issue, the increasing-block electricity pricing (IBP) system was established in the residential sector nationwide in 2012. This paper depicts the detailed implementation of the IBP in Shanghai and Shenzhen, which are typical Chinese cities. Overall, the IBP motivates residential electricity saving to some extent. However, 15.55% of the respondents still do not know about the IBP. Most respondents have limited knowledge about the contents of the IBP. 58% of the respondents were unaware that retail residential electricity prices were subsidized by the government. Furthermore, binary response models were applied to analyze the influencing factors of respondents' electricity saving feedback on the IBP. The analysis indicates that if households are large, apply time-of-use (TOU) pricing, purchase energy-efficient appliances, have adequate knowledge of electricity saving and IBP contents, or understand the situation of electricity cross-subsidy, they are more likely to be influenced by the IBP to save electricity. The government should enhance public's awareness about IBP, optimize the pricing of each block and guide the residents to understand the existence of electricity subsidy.

Electricity plays a key role in modern energy service and climate mitigation. Electricity is becoming more accessible and it is substituted for fossil fuel in more scenarios. Generating electricity from clean energy instead of traditional coal and improving the efficiency of electricity generation, transmission, distribution, and utilization are making it possible for a carbon emission growth reduction. Here we explored the question of whether more use of electricity will lead to less carbon emission growth. Firstly, based on the panel data of 114 countries from 2000 to 2014, we applied a STIRPAT model and then analyzed the relationship between carbon emission and electricity use level with fixed effects panel model and adopted a panel threshold regression model considering electricity-generating source heterogeneity. The results show that electricity use level has a significant negative effect on carbon emission especially when clean energy-based electricity takes a bigger portion. Population, economic growth, urbanization, and industrialization have significant positive impacts on carbon emission. We came up with policy implications based on the results in the end.

In this paper, we evaluate the changes in carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption in China's food industry from 1986 to 2010 based on the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method. The results show that energy intensity (EI) and industrial activity (IA) are the main determinants of the changes in carbon dioxide. Energy intensity (EI) contributes to decrease in emissions within 25 years while industrial activity (IA) acts in a positive way to increase the emissions level. Industry scale (IS) mostly contributes to increase in emissions except for the time interval 1996–2000. However, for both carbon intensity (CI) and energy structure (ES), they have a volatile but not significant influence on emissions in the different time intervals. To further understand the effects, we analyze the cumulative emission during the whole period 1986–2010. The results further testify that energy intensity and industrial activity are the most important factors affecting reduction and growth of carbon emissions. The results indicate that efforts to reduce emission in China's food industry should focus on the enhancement of energy efficiency, the optimization of industrial scale and the restructuring energy use. Finally, recommendations are provided for the reduction of carbon dioxide in China's food industry.

This paper employs a newly developed non-radial directional distance function to evaluate China's regional energy and CO2 emission performance for the period 1997–2009. Moreover, we analyze the impact of China's market-oriented reform on China's regional energy and carbon efficiency. The main findings are as follows. First, most of China's regions did not perform efficiently in energy use and CO2 emissions. Provinces in the east area generally performed better than those in the central and west areas. By contrast, provinces in the west area generally evidenced the lowest efficiency. Second, Market-oriented reforms, especially the promotion of factor market, were found to have positive effect on the efficiency of energy use and CO2 emissions. Third, the share of coal in the total energy consumption and the expansion of the industrial sector were found to be negatively correlated with China's regional energy and CO2 emissions performance. Based on the empirical findings, we provide policy suggestions for enhancing energy and carbon efficiency in China.

Energy efficiency improvement will reduce the effective price of energy services, and hence at least partially mitigate original expected energy conservation. Therefore, the magnitude of rebound effect is important for the design and timing of an effective energy conservation policy. Under the framework of translog cost share equations, we estimates the direct rebound effect for heavy industry in China for the first time by conducting an empirical research on the relationship between the direct rebound effect and the ease with which energy services can substitute for other inputs. Additionally, asymmetric price responses are specified in the model for the rebound effect estimation. Empirical results in our paper indicate that the rebound effect for heavy industry in China is about 74.3%. This reveals that energy efficiency improvement can save energy to a certain degree since the rebound effect is less than 100% (“back-fire”), but most of the expected reduction in heavy industry energy consumption is mitigated. These findings prove that energy pricing reforms and energy taxes should be further implemented to achieve effective energy conservation in China’s 12th Five Years Plan.