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Based on panel data of 282 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2013 to 2020, this paper investigates the impact and transmission paths of the "LFD" land disposal model on urban air quality at the theoretical and empirical levels using dynamic fixed-effects and dynamic spatial Durbin models. The results show that the way land is allocated in a city has a lagging and long-term impact on air quality not only locally but also in neighboring cities. The type of land supply by local governments to different sectors is an important pathway to influence urban air quality. Extended analysis shows that land market reforms in China can significantly reduce urban air quality index (AQI) and effectively mitigate urban air quality, with long-term effects. This paper provides a theoretical and scientific basis for correcting the mismatch of land resources and promoting urban ecological environment in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to air pollution is linked with an elevated risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and CVDs-related mortality. However, there is a shortage of scientometric analysis on this topic. Therefore, we propose a scientometric study to explore research hotspots and directions in this topical field over the past decade. We used the core collection of Web of Science (WoS) to obtain relevant publications and analyzed them using Excel, the Bibliometix R-package, CiteSpace, and VOSviewer. The study covered various aspects such as annual publications, highly cited papers, co-cited references, journals, authors, countries, organizations, and keywords. Research on air pollution and CVDs has remarkable increase over the past decade, with notable researchers including Kan H, Brook RD, Peters A, and Schwartz J. The 3144 articles were published by 4448 institutions in 131 countries/regions. The leading countries were the USA and China, and the most published journal was Environmental Research. Mortality, hospital admissions, oxidative stress, inflammation, long-term exposure, fine particulate matter, and PM2.5 are the top areas that merit further investigation and hold significant potential for advancing our understanding of the complex relationship between air pollution and CVDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coordinated efforts to reduce haze and carbon emissions are important in promoting global climate governance and sustainable development. In this paper, based on prefecture-level data of China from 2005 to 2019, we investigate the impact of environmental regulatory intensity on the emissions of the concentration of PM2.5 and carbon dioxide (CO2). The research indicates that environmental regulation facilitates synergistic governance for PM2.5 reduction and carbon mitigation. Green technological advancement emerges as the primary mechanism through which environmental regulation achieves haze reduction and carbon mitigation. This conclusion remains robust after a series of robustness tests. Furthermore, the results from quantile regression reveal that the haze reduction and carbon mitigation effects of environmental regulation are subject to certain conditional dependencies. Environmental regulation exhibits a significant negative impact on carbon emissions across various quantile points. However, their influence on different quantile levels of PM2.5 concentration displays an asymmetric pattern. Finally, threshold regression findings suggest that there is no significant threshold effect of environmental regulation on CO2 emissions, but there are dual threshold effects on the PM2.5 concentration. Therefore, it is recommended that local governments judiciously implement environmental regulatory intensity, establish interregional policies for haze reduction and carbon mitigation, and fully harness the driving force of green technology to promote a comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a quasi-natural experiment of national innovative city pilot policy (NICPP) is carried out to investigate the impact of the NICPP on green technology innovation (GTI) and its intrinsic mechanism with the method of difference-in-differences. It is found that the NICPP significantly enhances GTI, and there is a certain lag and persistence in this effect. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the higher the administrative level and the more the geographical advantages of NICPP, the more obvious the driving effect of GTI. The mechanism test shows that the NICPP has an effect on the GTI through three channels: innovation factor input, agglomeration effect of science and technology talent, and entrepreneurial vitality empowerment. The findings of this study provide policy insights for further optimizing the construction of innovative cities and then promoting GTI development, ultimately realizing green dynamics transformation and high-quality development of China's economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is planning to introduce carbon tax policy to control the carbon emissions of the country better and achieve the "3060 goals", but there is still widespread discussion about how to introduce it and how to combine it with cap and trade. China has already established a national carbon emission trading market; however, there is also disagreement on whether to impose the carbon tax on companies and projects that have been included in scope of cap and trade. This paper adopts the research method of experimental economics to study the effect on social economy and social emission reduction under cap and trade, carbon tax, and carbon tax-carbon trading policies, and analyzes average prices of carbon market under cap and trade and carbon tax-carbon trading policies. The study finds that under the carbon tax-carbon trading policy, carbon emissions cannot be reduced significantly; but the profits of manufacturers will be reduced significantly; meanwhile, this reduction effect is even more severe for high consumption manufacturers; and it will be resulting in a lower average carbon market price under the carbon tax-carbon trading policies than under the cap and trade policy. This paper will provide theoretical suggestions for introducing carbon tax policy into China in the future and make policy recommendations for the better development of China's carbon market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major environmental concern today is the carbon emissions caused by rapid urbanization. As the largest developing country and carbon emitter, China has controlled the urban growth boundary (UGB) as a quasi-experimental policy to achieve carbon neutrality. Therefore, this paper employs the difference in differences (DID) method, for panel data from 2000 to 2019 in China to shed light on the effects on carbon emissions. Results show that the UGB can reduce carbon emissions considerably. After the implementation of the policy, the carbon emissions of the pilot cities decreased by 23.91%. Additionally, a series of robustness tests such as PSM-DID and Placebo tests support the conclusions. Moreover, the greater influence is reflected in the scope of the whole city and the intensity of the permanent plan. The UGB is more susceptible to cities in the central and western areas and cities with weak environmental regulations. Through the mechanism tests, the emission reduction effect of the UGB will be greater in cities with larger vegetation coverage and advanced industry structure. Furthermore, our analysis suggests the UGB needs to be adequately promoted as a policy to achieve carbon neutrality in cities. To make the policy more effective, vegetation cover and industrial structure ought to be taken into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-quality carbon information disclosure is required with the development of China's national carbon emission trading market. It is still controversial what factors influence carbon information disclosure quality in China's power industry. This paper involved four factors: government regulation, media reports, enterprise size, and directors' professional backgrounds based on strategic change theory. The carbon information disclosure quality was measured using the analytic hierarchy process (APH) and entropy weight method (EWM). Then, panel data regression was used to analyze the relationship between the factors and carbon information disclosure quality. The results showed that (1) the quantity of media reports has no significant correlation with carbon information disclosure quality. (2) The proportion of directors with legal backgrounds to all directors is significantly and negatively correlated with carbon information disclosure quality. (3) Government regulation, the media value orientation, enterprise size, and the proportion of directors with accounting backgrounds to all directors are significantly and positively related to the carbon information disclosure quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the ways to fight against global warming is by means of green technological progress. This paper explores the nonlinear relationship between R&D investment and green technological progress based on panel threshold regression model using panel data of 26 manufacturing sub-sectors in China from 2004 to 2017. The results show that the double-threshold model can better explain the nonlinear relationship between the two, and the R&D investment in the three ranges of low, medium, and high levels can significantly promote green technological progress in China's manufacturing industry. However, with the improvement of R&D investment level, the promotion effect of R&D investment on the progress of manufacturing green technology is decreasing, which explains the low R&D intensity of China's manufacturing industry to a certain extent. When the level of R&D investment reaches a certain level, its promoting effect on manufacturing industry's green technological progress will be greatly reduced, and the motivation of enterprises to invest in R&D based on self-interest will decrease, so that the scale of R&D investment will be lower than the optimal scale of society. R&D investment can also improve green technical efficiency change. In addition, environmental regulation can promote green technological progress in manufacturing industry. However, due to the implementation of output-oriented environmental regulation policies, China's environmental regulation can inhibit the improvement of green technical efficiency change. Based on the conclusion, this paper argues that China should implement differentiated R&D subsidy policies for manufacturing enterprises, especially to increase R&D subsidies for enterprises with a medium level of R&D investment, and formulate appropriate environmental regulatory policies, to promote green and low-carbon transformation of China's manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the database of green patents of China's A-share listed enterprises from 2001 to 2018, this paper identifies the impact of the province-managing-county (PMC) fiscal reform on the green innovation performance of enterprises by using staggered DID method. The results show that the PMC fiscal reform significantly promotes enterprises' green innovation performance, and this impact is not only reflected in the quantity of green patents but also in the quality. The mechanism test finds that the policy effect of PMC fiscal reform comes from the attraction of environmental investment and optimization of human capital structure. The PMC fiscal reform expands the financial autonomy of county governments, facilitating the compensation and allocation mechanism. Moreover, the paper incorporates the county-power-expansion (CPE) reform into the robustness test to exclude the interference of other policies in the same period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon emission trading has been actively applied in many countries, and its operational effect has received widespread attention. However, previous studies mostly focused on single environmental effect, and the investigation of the comprehensive environmental effect needs to be further supplemented. Based on this, this paper explores the comprehensive environmental effect of carbon emission trading with eco-efficiency as the starting point. First, this paper measures eco-efficiency using the super-efficient minimum distance to strong efficient frontier (MinDS) model with undesirable outputs. Second, this paper uses the propensity score matching difference in difference (PSM-DID) model to quantify the effect of carbon emission trading on eco-efficiency. Finally, this paper examines the mediating mechanism of the effect of carbon emission trading on eco-efficiency based on the mediating effect model. The results show that carbon emission trading can improve the level of urban eco-efficiency. Energy savings and increased efficiency effectively mediate the promoting effect of carbon emission trading on eco-efficiency. The mediating push effect of R&D innovation and industrial structure restructuring has not yet appeared. This paper can not only provide policy basis for the improvement of carbon emission trading market but also provide reference for the construction of carbon emission trading market in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital economy is an important way to relieve current pressure on resources and the environment. Based on ecological modernization theory and global value chain theory, this paper adopts panel data of 17 manufacturing industries from 2000 to 2014, uses the non-radial directional distance function and the meta-frontier method to measure China's green total factor productivity (GTFP) and its sub-indices, and takes the embedding degree and embedding position as moderating variables and threshold variables to construct an econometric model to explore the relationship among the digital economy, global value chain, and GTFP. The results show that (1) the digital economy has a positive effect on GTFP in both time and space. And in terms of time, the digital economy mainly enhances GTFP by improving technical efficiency and narrowing the technology gap. (2) Global value chain embedding position positively moderates the relationship between the digital economy and GTFP; In terms of sub-samples, labor-intensive and capital-intensive industries show the same impact characteristics as the total sample. (3) Further, it is found that the digital economy and GTFP have nonlinear characteristics. There is a single threshold effect on the embedding position. When the embedding position is low, the digital economy is positively correlated with GTFP but not significant; when the threshold value is crossed, the digital economy can significantly promote GTFP. The conclusions of this paper are helpful to realize the digital economy to promote the green development of the manufacturing industry, and provide an effective reference for the realization mechanism of China's green economy transformation and ecological civilization construction in the post-pandemic era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Basin Horizontal Ecological Compensation Mechanism (BHEC) is a significant institutional innovation in China's water environment management, aimed at achieving green, low-carbon, and high-quality development in the basin. This paper examines the current status of the spatial association network of green low-carbon development in Xin'an River basin, using social network analysis based on data from prefecture-level cities between 2006 and 2019. Using a dual difference model, the paper explores the important role of BHEC in promoting green low-carbon development from the perspectives of production and consumption and analyzes the path of BHEC's promotion of green low-carbon development in detail. The results indicate that (1) the green low-carbon development in the Xin'an River basin is universally connected in space, but this connection is uneven among the cities in the basin, presenting a network spatial structure with the central region as the core and the north and south regions approaching the core. (2) BHEC contributes to green low-carbon development, and the "two-wheel drive" of green technology progress and green technology efficiency is essential to improve green low-carbon development. (3) From the perspective of consumption affecting green low-carbon development, the positive impact of BHEC on green low-carbon development is inseparable from the synergistic guarantee of public participation. (4) From the production side of green low-carbon development, the ecological effect, structural effect, and technological effect are significant transmission factors of compensation policies affecting green low-carbon development. (5) The "blood transfusion" pilot policy is more helpful to improve green low-carbon development, and compensation policy has positive spillover effects. Finally, the paper argues that the trans-basin ecological compensation policy is expected to become a long-term mechanism to promote green low-carbon and high-quality development in the basin, providing a theoretical and practical basis for developing countries to achieve green low-carbon development through an ecological compensation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the sample of all A-share listed companies in China's securities market except insurance and financial enterprises from 2009 to 2021 to construct a long panel data, and explores whether the environmental investment of enterprises will promote their long-term sustainable development in China's unique and superior institutional and cultural environment from the perspective of Marxist ecological civilization. On the basis of controlling measurement errors, omitted variables, and endogenous problems of mutual causality to ensure the robustness of the research results, and further distinguishing the heterogeneous effects of environmental investment and sustainable development of enterprises in different degrees of market-oriented environment, the empirical study shows that (1) there is a significant positive relationship between environmental investment and sustainable development of enterprises. That is to say, environmental investment can help enterprises obtain social capital, alleviate resource constraints, enhance their market performance, and thus help their sustainable development in the future; (2) environmental protection investment has a significant positive impact on the sustainable development of enterprises in the mature market environment, while in the relatively backward market environment, environmental protection investment has no significant role in promoting the sustainable development of enterprises. This paper enriches the literature on corporate environmental investment, makes a preliminary test of the implementation effect of sustainable development in China, and provides more detailed empirical evidence for the government to further guide the implementation and implementation of corporate environmental responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years,. the rapid development of the Yangtze River Delta in China has led to increasingly serious regional eco-environmental problems. Therefore, it is of great significance for the construction of ecological civilization to study the ecosystem health in the Yangtze River Delta. In this paper, the assessment framework of "Vigor-Organization-Resilience" was used to assess the ecosystem health index (EHI) of the Yangtze River Delta from 2000 to 2020, and then the spatial autocorrelation method was used to analyze the agglomeration of EHI in 314 counties in this region. Finally, the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model and the SHapley Additive exPlanation (SHAP) model were combined to explore the synergistic impact of EHI driving factors. The results show that (1) from 2000 to 2020, the EHI in the Yangtze River Delta is at the level of ordinary health, and gradually decreased; (2) the EHI has significant spatial positive correlation and aggregation; (3) the driving factors in descending order of importance are urbanization level (UL), precipitation (PRE), PM2.5 (PM), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and temperature (TEMP); and (4) the relationship between UL and EHI is logarithmic; PRE and EHI are quartic polynomial; PM, NDVI, TEMP, and EHI are quadratic polynomial. The results of this paper are of great significance to the management and restoration of the ecosystem in this region [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation is the key carbon emission source after energy supply and industrial production. Under the vision of carbon peak and carbon neutralization, the pressure of reducing carbon emissions in transportation will be greater in the future. This paper constructs a model that takes transportation carbon emission as the main target and freight transportation utility value as the auxiliary target. The constructed model satisfies the constraints of freight turnover in the whole society, freight economic and social benefits, and the ecological constraints of the freight system. With MATLAB, the freight turnover of roadways, railways, and waterways (excluding ocean transportation) in 2030 is solved by using the adaptive genetic algorithm. The results indicate that (I) compared with the current freight structure of China, the roadway freight sharing rate in 2030 will decrease by 8.07%, and the railway freight sharing rate and the waterway freight sharing rate (excluding ocean transportation) will increase by 0.93% and 7.13%, respectively. (II) After optimization, the energy consumption and carbon emission are reduced by 42,471,500 tons (10.3%) and 91,379,400 tons (10.2%) of standard coal, respectively. (III) The adaptive genetic algorithm outperforms the traditional genetic algorithm in terms of convergence speed and accuracy. (IV) As the weight coefficient of carbon emission increases, the utility value of freight transportation consistently decreases, and the sensitivity increases. Meanwhile, as the carbon emission weight coefficient increases, carbon emission keeps decreasing, and the sensitivity decreases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shadow price of carbon emissions can measure the marginal output effect under the carbon emission regulation and is also one of the key indicators to construct a low-carbon development path for production units. Currently, international research on shadow price is focused on the industrial and energy sectors. However, in the context of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality targets in China, the use of shadow price to study the cost of reducing emissions from agricultural production, especially forestry fruit industries, is significant. In this paper, we use a parametric approach to construct the quadratic ambient directional distance function. Using the input–output data of peach, we then calculate the environmental technical efficiency and shadow price of carbon emissions from peach production in Guangxi, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Sichuan provinces, and further estimate the values of green output in each province. The results show that (i) the environmental technology efficiency of peach production in Jiangsu province, located in the coastal plain area of eastern China, is the highest among the four provinces, while that in Guangxi province, located in the hilly area of southeast China, is the lowest. (ii) Guangxi province has the smallest carbon shadow price of peach production among the four provinces, while Sichuan province, located in the mountainous area of southwest China, has the largest. (iii) The green output value of the peach production in Jiangsu province is the highest among the four provinces, and that in Guangxi province is the lowest. In order to effectively reduce carbon emissions in peach production without affecting economic benefits, the paper puts forward the following suggestions: for peach-producing areas in the southeast hills of China, it is necessary to increase the application of green environmental technology while reducing the input of production factors in peach production. For peach-producing areas in the northern plains of China, the input of production factors should be reduced. It is not easy for peach-producing areas in the southwest mountains of China to reduce the input of production factors while increasing the application of green technologies. Finally, for peach-producing areas in China's eastern coastal plain, the implementation of environmental regulations for peach production should be gradual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the background of China's high-quality development, improving the ecological environment, enhancing the welfare level of residents and promoting the sustainable development of cities have become a hot issue of widespread concern in society. This paper focuses on the Yangtze River Delta region, aiming to study the direct incentive effect and spatial spillover effect of creating a national health city on the ecological welfare performance. It also further decomposes the spatial spillover effect, to study the path of spatial spillover and the characteristics of heterogeneity in different regions. The results show that (1) the ecological welfare performance in the Yangtze River Delta is increasing year by year, and the average growth rate was 0.23%. There is a spatial effect of "beggar-thy-neighbor." The improvement of local ecological welfare performance will reduce the performance level of the surrounding areas by more than 30%. (2) To create a national health city in local areas, the ecological welfare performance in local areas will be increased by 0.087%, and the ecological welfare performance in the surrounding areas will be increased by 0.031%. Among them, the ecological welfare performance of the surrounding national health cities will be increased by 0.067%, and the ecological welfare performance of the surrounding non-health cities will not be significantly improved. (3) The effect has heterogeneity in coastal and inland areas. In terms of direct incentive effect, coastal areas are more obvious than inland areas. In terms of spatial spillover effect, inland areas show more positive spatial spillover effect than coastal areas, whether in groups or within groups. This paper is the first time to study this issue, enhance the theory, and practice of ecological welfare performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development can be mainly achieved by promoting the green transformation and development of the world economy and by improving the efficiency of regional green development, which often receive extensive attention from the academia. This paper uses a spatial econometric model to estimate the impact of manufacturing agglomeration on green development efficiency based on the panel data of China's Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB). The results show an overall large gap of green development efficiency between regions in the Yangtze River Economic Zone, mostly due to the extremely uneven development of green development efficiency in the upper reaches. Opposite to the middle and lower reaches, manufacturing agglomeration in the upper reaches of the YREB improves green development efficiency. Manufacturing agglomeration is conducive to the improvement of green development efficiency in adjacent areas. Nonetheless, it may hinder green development efficiency by inhibiting green technological innovation. This paper provides empirical evidence and policy implications for applying manufacturing agglomeration to promote green development efficiency in accordance with local conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the spatial impact effects and spatio-temporal heterogeneity of the digital economy on urban carbon emissions (CO2). Specifically, firstly, the Digital Economy Index (DEI) system of 285 cities in China was constructed and the Global Principal Component Analysis (GPCA) was applied to evaluate the digital economy level of Chinese cities. Based on spatial correlation and spatial heterogeneity, the paper explores the global spatial impact and spatio-temporal heterogeneity of the impact of digital economy on CO2 using spatial Durbin model (SDM) and geographic time-weighted regression (GTWR), respectively. And the mechanism variables are used to further demonstrate the mechanism effect and nonlinear characteristics of the impact of digital economy on CO2. The findings indicate that (1) the advancement of the digital economy is beneficial for achieving carbon abatement goals, and the impact of the digital economy on CO2 mitigation remains stable across several robustness tests. (2) The spatial spillover effect of the digital economy on the impact of carbon reduction is not significant. And there is significant temporal and spatial heterogeneity in the impact of the digital economy on carbon emissions. (3) According to the mechanism analysis, the digital economy reduces carbon emissions by encouraging the development of green technologies and promoting the modernization of industrial structures. And there are non-linear characteristics of this effect. This study concludes that the digital economy can support China's goal of achieving "carbon peak and carbon neutrality." However, it is important to consider the differences in urban development over time and space. Leveraging the city's strengths to develop a digital economy in a unique way that will help achieve China's carbon reduction goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the expansion of China's automobile market and the increase in the proportion of electric vehicles, the influence of the automobile industry on water resources has been increasingly, and as a result, water resources will become an important factor restricting the development of the electric vehicle industry in China. Until now, there are still no in-depth studies on the influences of the water footprint of electric vehicles. The paper establishes a life cycle assessment model by which to analyze the reduction potential of the water footprint of various types of passenger vehicles in their operation. The paper also compares the water footprint of passenger vehicles under different power structures, revealing the potential influence of developing electric vehicles on the demand of water resources. The results show that at the base year (2019), the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles consume more water than the gasoline-based internal combustion engine vehicles do, while water consumption of the hybrid electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles is lower than that of the gasoline-based internal combustion engine vehicles; as for the year 2035, even after the proportion of renewable energy generation increases, the water withdrawal and consumption of the battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will still be larger than those of the gasoline-based internal combustion engine vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the digital economy grows rapidly around the world, how would it impact carbon emissions? This paper discusses this issue from the perspective of heterogeneous innovation. Based on the panel data of 284 cities in China from 2011 to 2020, this paper empirically examines the impact of the digital economy on carbon emissions as well as the mediating and threshold effects of different innovation modes. The study finds that the digital economy can significantly reduce carbon emissions; this conclusion holds after a series of robustness tests. Independent innovation and imitative innovation are important channels through which the digital economy affects carbon emissions, but technological introduction is not an effective way. For regions with high levels of financial investment in science and innovative talents, the reduction in carbon emissions from the digital economy is more significant. Further research shows that the effect of the digital economy on carbon emissions has a threshold feature, with an inverted U-shaped relationship between the two, and that an increase in autonomous innovation and imitation innovation can enhance the digital economy's carbon reduction effect. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the capacity of independent innovation and imitation innovation to exploit the carbon-cutting effect of the digital economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the case of China, there is a need of green energy system to boost growth and environment. However, the current growth of urbanization is putting high pressure on energy system through financial capital. Hence, it is a need to develop such path through renewable energy consumption, capital development, and urbanization to enhance the performance of development and environment. Therefore, this paper contributes to the literature by adding the asymmetries between renewable energy, urbanization, economic growth, and capital investment by covering the period from 1970 to 2021. For this purpose, we apply the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model to find the nonlinearities between the variables under study. The findings confirm the asymmetric short- and long-term relationships between the variables. In this sense, capitalization shows the short- and long-term asymmetric impacts on renewable energy consumption. In addition, urbanization and economic growth have long-term asymmetric and positive impacts on renewable energy consumption. At last, this paper provides applicable and practical policy implications for China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving the efficiency of factor allocation, breaking the resource curse, and achieving high-quality economic development are an urgent concern in resource-based cities. Using the panel data of 116 prefecture-level resource-based cities in China from 2005 to 2020, this paper constructs the data envelopment analysis-Malmquist index model to measure the level of high-quality economic development; to construct a resource misallocation growth accounting model based on the total production function to measure the distortion coefficient, the threshold panel model is employed to explore the threshold effect of factor market distortion on high-quality economic development. The results yielded three important findings: (1) The green total factor productivity of resource-based cities in China presents spatial heterogeneity and type heterogeneity. (2) Factor market distortion gradient standards are proposed innovatively, and the factor market distortion level shows the spatial heterogeneity and type heterogeneity. (3) The influence of factor market distortion on high-quality economic development in resource-based cities presents a double threshold effect. According to the above research conclusions, this paper gives several policy recommendations to promote the factor marketization allocation and high-quality economic development of resource-based cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New energy strategies are crucial to address energy and environmental issues, but the energy consumption transition may also affect firm behavior with unintended economic consequences. Using data from A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019, this paper investigates the impact of energy consumption structure transformation on firms' total factor productivity (TFP) using China's new energy demonstration city (NEDC) policy as a shock. It is found that the NEDC reduces firms' TFP by about 6.4%. This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness and endogeneity tests. According to the channel analysis, NEDC reduces the efficiency of firms' resource allocation and innovation, resulting in efficiency losses. Furthermore, differences in firms' ownership and geographical location make the impact of NEDC on TFP heterogeneous. For example, the hindering effect of NEDC on TFP is more pronounced in private firms and firms in regions with lower marketization. This paper shows that the promotion and application of new energy may have certain economic costs. To better balance the benefits and costs of new energy strategies, the government and other relevant departments should increase policy flexibility and perfection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a significant carbon emitter, China has set a target in 2020 of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality." This target presents stricter criteria for the company's carbon information disclosure quality (CIDQ). Meantime, financial performance (FP) is a primary consideration for companies and their stakeholders. Therefore, this paper selected public companies in the electric power industry (EPI), which are the first to be integrated into the carbon emissions trading market, to research the impact of CIDQ on FP. Theoretically, this paper enhances the conclusions regarding the impact of CIDQ on FP, which might serve as a reference for future research, and practically, this paper can reduce management resistance to carbon information disclosure in pursuing profit, facilitate the co-improvement of CIDQ and FP, contribute in achieving China's target of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality." First, this paper constructed a CIDQ evaluation index system by analyzing the characteristics of diverse sub-sectors within the EPI, which can make the CIDQ evaluation system more rational, and then evaluated it using a comprehensive evaluation method based on uncertain normal cloud (UNC) combination weight, which can reflect the ambiguity and uncertainty of the information obtained during the process of evaluating the company's CIDQ, and broaden the thought process for evaluating the CIDQ. Furthermore, the paper used factor analysis (FA) to evaluate FP, effectively resolving the issue of massive data while preserving the essential information of financial indicators. Finally, the paper concluded by analyzing the impact of the CIDQ on FP using a multiple linear regression model. The results indicated that the CIDQ by electric public companies has a positive impact on solvency and profitability, a negative impact on operating capacity, and a non-significant impact on development capacity. In response to these conclusions, this paper proposed corresponding suggestions at the government, society, and company levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the largest energy consumer, China's control of carbon emissions from energy consumption plays a pivotal role in world climate governance. However, few studies have been conducted to explore the emission reduction pathways that promote a high level of synergy between China's economic growth and the " carbon peaking and carbon neutrality " goal from the perspective of energy consumption. Based on the measurement of energy consumption carbon emissions, this paper reveals the spatial and temporal distribution and evolution trends of carbon emissions in China at the national-provincial level. The multi-dimensional socio-economic factors such as R&D and urbanization are taken into account, and the LMDI model is used to decompose the driving effects of energy consumption carbon emissions at the national-provincial levels. Further, this paper combines the Tapio decoupling index with the LMDI model to decompose the decoupling states of China year by year and at the provincial level in four periods to explore the reasons for the change of carbon decoupling states. The results show that: (1) China's energy consumption carbon emissions grew at a high rate before 2013, and slowed down after that. There are significant differences in the scale and growth rate of carbon emissions among provinces, which can be classified into four types accordingly. (2) The R&D scale effect, urbanization effect, and population scale effect are the factors driving the growth of China's carbon emissions; while the energy structure effect, energy consumption industry structure effect, energy intensity effect, and R&D efficiency effect inhibit the growth of China's carbon emissions. (3) Weak decoupling is the most dominant decoupling state in China from 2003 to 2020, and the decoupling state varies significantly among provinces. According to the conclusions, this paper proposes targeted policy recommendations based on China's energy endowment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital economy is crucial to promoting green technology innovation and development. However, there needs to be more research on the relationship between the digital economy, digital talent aggregation (DTA), and green technology innovation (GTI). Therefore, based on the data from 30 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in mainland China (excluding Tibet) from 2011 to 2020, this paper uses fixed effect, threshold effect, moderating effect model, and spatial econometric model to make an empirical analysis of this research direction. The results show that (1) there is a nonlinear relationship between the digital economy and green technology innovation (GTI). This effect has regional heterogeneity effects. In the central and western regions, the digital economy is more prominent in promoting green technology innovation (GTI). (2) Digital talent aggregation (DTA) has a negative moderating effect on the influence of the digital economy on promoting green technology innovation (GTI). (3) The negative spillover effect of the digital economy on local green technology innovation (GTI) will be intensified at the spatial level due to the accumulation of digital talents. Therefore, this paper suggests that the government should actively and reasonably develop the digital economy to promote green technology innovation (GTI). In addition, the government can implement a flexible talent introduction policy, strengthen talent quality education and talent service station construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance is a vital pursuit of firms' strategy and has caused substantial influences on firms' behavior and outcomes. Therefore, exploring how to facilitate the firms' ESG performance is necessary. This paper examines the role of CEOs' hometown identity in facilitating firm's ESG performance. Based on a sample of Chinese listed firms during 2010–2018, we compare the ESG performance of firms with hometown CEO with that of firms without hometown CEO and find that CEOs' hometown identity is associated with significantly higher ESG performance. The benchmark results still hold after instrumental variable regression, placebo test, propensity score matching, lagging, and altering the measurement of CEOs' hometown identity. Additional analysis shows that CEOs' hometown identity exerts a more prominent positive effect on ESG performance among firms with higher financing constraints and SOEs. Our findings reveal a bright side of CEOs' hometown identity: it facilitates ESG performance. Therefore, this paper's conclusion sheds new light on the bright side of CEOs' hometown identity from the perspective of firms' ESG performance and provides insights into how to improve ESG performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The renewable energy+energy storage model has an important role to play in achieving China's proposal of the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goal. In order to study the development mechanism of renewable energy+storage cooperation with government participation, this paper constructs a three-party evolutionary game model among government, renewable energy generators, and energy storage service suppliers, based on the data of a renewable energy+storage project in a Chinese province. In this paper, we analyze the game process and the factors affecting the behavioral strategies of the three parties through numerical simulation. The study shows that the government regulation has a positive effect on the cooperative development of renewable energy+energy storage, and it can effectively restrain the wasteful phenomenon of renewable energy generation by means of punishment and improve the operating income of cooperative projects by means of subsidies, which can help the enterprises to broaden the application scenarios of energy storage. The government can effectively promote the improvement of renewable energy+energy storage cooperation mechanism by formulating regulatory mechanism, controlling the cost of supervision, and dynamically adjusting the intensity of supervision. Therefore, the research in this paper not only enriches the research related to renewable energy+energy storage mode but also provides valuable reference for the government to formulate regulatory policies related to renewable energy+energy storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, the local government's "land for development" strategy has led to a large number of urban construction land allocated to the industrial field, which has promoted the rapid development of industry and economy in the short term but also brought serious environmental quality losses. This paper systematically sets out how land misallocation works on urban air quality and employs the spatial Durbin model (SDM) to conduct an empirical analysis on the panel data of 283 China cities at or above the prefecture level. The result shows that, stimulated by financial maximization and political promotion, in order to obtain more fiscal revenue and growth performance, local governments prefer to allocate a large number of urban construction land to industry and related fields, which leads to the underestimation of industrial land price and the misallocation of land resources. Land misallocation has exerted significant inhibiting effects on the air quality of local and their surrounding cities through inhibiting the upgrading of industrial structure. Further analysis reveals that the bigger the city, the lesser the inhibition effects of land misallocation on upgrading of industrial structure and urban air quality and vice versa. The conclusions of this paper can provide a useful reference for local governments to optimize land allocation, promote economic restructuring, and environmental quality upgrading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of population agglomeration on urban economic development quality in various cities of China. The results show that population agglomeration significantly contributes to the improvement of urban green total factor productivity by increasing population diversification, promoting knowledge spillovers, and reducing pollution emission intensity. Moreover, we find that population agglomeration in type II big cities and type I large cities significantly improves green total factor productivity, while the impact of population agglomeration in metropolises and mega-cities on green total factor productivity is not significant. On the one hand, type II big cities and type I large cities are in the period of rising economic development, the population has not yet reached saturation, and there is still a large demographic dividend space. On the other hand, excessive population agglomeration also brings about "urban diseases" such as population congestion and traffic congestion, especially in the metropolises and mega-cities. Finally, using data on producer services and its sub-sectors, we identify a more significant driving effect of high-end talent agglomeration on green total factor productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative reduction of carbon and air pollutants can more efficiently achieve green technological change, industrial low-carbon transition, and high-quality economic and social development. As a typical environmental policy in China, the pilot carbon Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) has obvious advantages in achieving the collaborative reduction of carbon and air pollutants. Therefore, an evaluation of China's pilot carbon ETS from the perspective of collaborative reduction of carbon and air pollutants is performed in this paper. Compared with previous studies, first, this study innovatively uses the coupled coordination degree (CCD) model to measure the collaborative reduction level of carbon and air pollutants under different scenarios based on the panel data of China's 30 provincial-level regions during 2004–2018. Second, this study uses the DID method to evaluate the impact of China's pilot carbon ETS on the collaborative reduction of carbon and air pollutants and conducts some robustness checks and regional heterogeneity regressions. Third, this study uses the synthetic control method (SCM) further to examine the policy outcomes of the pilot carbon ETS. Scenario analysis shows that attaching importance to reducing air pollution will improve the collaborative reduction effect of carbon and air pollutants. Furthermore, the implementation of China's pilot carbon ETS exerts an effect of roughly 24.7% on reducing carbon, roughly 10.1% on reducing air pollutants, and roughly 22.0% on the collaborative reduction of carbon and air pollutants, ceteris paribus. Regional heterogeneity analysis shows that the impacts of the pilot carbon ETS are significant in all regions, except that the impact on reducing air pollutants in the central region is not significant. In addition, results from SCM indicate that the impacts of the pilot carbon ETS on the collaborative reduction of carbon and air pollutants are significantly efficient in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hubei, and Chongqing, while not much efficient in Guangdong and Fujian. The main policy implications include strengthening the top-level design of the ETS in the collaborative reduction of carbon and air pollutants, attaching importance to the governance of air pollution, making the regional governance more targeted, and improving energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decoupling economic growth from electricity consumption is essential for energy conservation and emission reduction. Firstly, this paper applies the LMDI decomposition model to analyze the driving factors of electricity consumption in the Yangtze River Delta region. Secondly, scenario analysis and Monte Carlo technique are combined to research the evolutionary trend of electricity consumption from 2020 to 2035, so as to further analyze the decoupling state. Finally, using nonparametric kernel density estimation, this paper studies the evolution trend of decoupling state from 2005 to 2035. The results show that (1) economic growth is the main factor that promotes the increase of total electricity consumption. Domestic intensity and population scale contribute to the increase in total electricity consumption. The primary factor inhibiting the increase of total electricity consumption is production intensity, while industrial structure and urbanization level contribute to the decrease in total electricity consumption. (2) From 2005 to 2035, the decoupling level has been optimizing on the whole, and the internal gap has also reduced, but there still exists obvious internal gap. (3) Under the three scenarios, the evolution trend of production and domestic electricity consumption is the same. During 2020–2035, the production and domestic electricity consumption both show an increasing trend, with the total electricity consumption under the baseline scenario being the highest, followed by the general and the enhanced electricity-saving scenario. Combined with the empirical results of this paper, some policy recommendations are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

End of life tires (ELTs) are a pressing environmental concern due to their non-biodegradable nature and potential release of toxic chemicals, as confirmed by human health exposure studies. The expanding transport sector, driven by the automotive industry, has led to inadequate attention to safe tire disposal. This review extracted papers using keywords such as "waste tire rubber," "waste tire pollution," and "waste tire applications" from 2012 to 2023. Recycling publications have surged by 80% in the past decade, with China and the USA leading the research. Pyrolysis and devulcanization methods have emerged as key circular economy (CE) advancements, producing fuel and reusable rubber. Globally, 1.5 billion waste tires accumulate yearly, projected to increase by 70% in the next 30 years if unaddressed. Around 26 million tonnes of used tires are generated annually worldwide, while civil engineering and backfilling use 17 million tonnes of recycled rubber particles. These tires are complex polymer composites, primarily composed of natural and synthetic rubber. The amorphous nature of rubber results in a 50% loss of mechanical properties when exposed to chemicals and microbes, shortening its lifespan. This paper explores the applicability of waste tire rubber and polymer fabrication to offer eco-friendly and cost-effective solutions for proper disposal, mitigating environmental accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The carbon emissions trading scheme (CETS) in China is an important market-based environmental policy mechanism for decreasing carbon emissions. This paper calculates the total factor carbon productivity (TFCP) based on data from 275 cities in China from 2007 to 2020 using the DEA method and investigates the impact of the CETS on regional TFCP using the differences-in-differences (DID) method, all against the backdrop of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. The research findings reveal that CETS has consistently improved TFCP in pilot cities, and this conclusion has held up following a number of robustness tests. Temporal heterogeneity experiments demonstrate that as implementation time increases, the enhancing effect takes on an inverted "U-shaped" structure with a 7-year effective lifetime. Spatial heterogeneity studies reveal that as one moves away from the pilot cities, the policy effect on surrounding cities' TFCP is inhibited, followed by facilitation. CETS policies can influence regional TFCP through the effects of green innovation and industry upgrading, according to mediation mechanism testing. We present policy recommendations based on the research findings for meeting the "dual" carbon goals and strengthening the carbon trading mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, China is facing severe pressure of environmental emission reduction. As a kind of clean energy, waste-to-energy technology has the advantages of renewability, low pollution, and stable supply. To establish an affordable, effective, and sustainable waste disposable method is critical for the low carbon society transition. Therefore, the innovation diffusion of waste incineration power technology is a problem worth studying. Based on this, in order to answer this question scientifically, this paper constructs a system dynamics model of innovative diffusion, and analyzes the internal mechanism of innovation diffusion. The results show that firstly, the government support policies have a positive influence on the innovation and diffusion of waste incineration power technology; secondly, compared with the R&D policy, feed-in tariffs policy is more efficient to expand the installed capacity of waste incineration power; At last, technological innovation caused by government support policies is the main driving force of waste incineration power industry investment cost reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change will have a significant impact on the financial system, and it is crucial to evaluate the impact of climate risk on the financial system. In view of this, this paper evaluates the impact of climate transition risks on the financial system from the perspective of carbon tax. Based on the micro data of bank and enterprise loans, this paper uses a bottom-up approach to study the systemic risk of the banking sector caused by the carbon tax. Based on the actual data of China's banking sector in 2017, we find that there is an exponential relationship between the carbon tax and systemic risk, and there is a threshold for both the whole banking sector and different types of banks. When the carbon tax is higher than the threshold, systemic risk will increase significantly with the increase of the carbon tax level. At the same time, the results show that the systemic risk caused by the carbon tax has obvious sector heterogeneity and regional heterogeneity. Therefore, in the process of implementing carbon tax policies, the differences between sectors and regions should be taken into account, so as to effectively prevent and control systemic risks in the banking sector while improving the efficiency of carbon tax policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, China is facing severe pressure of environmental emission reduction. As a kind of clean energy, waste-to-energy technology has the advantages of renewability, low pollution, and stable supply. To establish an affordable, effective, and sustainable waste disposable method is critical for the low carbon society transition. Therefore, the innovation diffusion of waste incineration power technology is a problem worth studying. Based on this, in order to answer this question scientifically, this paper constructs a system dynamics model of innovative diffusion, and analyzes the internal mechanism of innovation diffusion. The results show that firstly, the government support policies have a positive influence on the innovation and diffusion of waste incineration power technology; secondly, compared with the R&D policy, feed-in tariffs policy is more efficient to expand the installed capacity of waste incineration power; At last, technological innovation caused by government support policies is the main driving force of waste incineration power industry investment cost reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change will have a significant impact on the financial system, and it is crucial to evaluate the impact of climate risk on the financial system. In view of this, this paper evaluates the impact of climate transition risks on the financial system from the perspective of carbon tax. Based on the micro data of bank and enterprise loans, this paper uses a bottom-up approach to study the systemic risk of the banking sector caused by the carbon tax. Based on the actual data of China's banking sector in 2017, we find that there is an exponential relationship between the carbon tax and systemic risk, and there is a threshold for both the whole banking sector and different types of banks. When the carbon tax is higher than the threshold, systemic risk will increase significantly with the increase of the carbon tax level. At the same time, the results show that the systemic risk caused by the carbon tax has obvious sector heterogeneity and regional heterogeneity. Therefore, in the process of implementing carbon tax policies, the differences between sectors and regions should be taken into account, so as to effectively prevent and control systemic risks in the banking sector while improving the efficiency of carbon tax policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on environmental footprint family (EFF), including these studies of environmental footprints and footprint family, has been widely applied to environmental impact assessment and sustainability evaluation. Although some bibliometric studies have focused on footprint indicators, there is still the lack of the contrast of Chinese and foreign literature in the field of EFF and the conclusions of successful practices at home and abroad in recent years. Unlike most previous papers, we improve the search strategy for collecting accurate documents data and compare China and foreign from a unified international perspective. Two datasets covering 1103 Chinese and 6011 foreign articles between 1996 and 2019 were collected to compare their bibliometric differences in EFF research. We not only comparatively investigate the overview of Chinese and foreign articles in EFF field based on the objects of publications, journals, authors, and institutions, but also explore their differences in the conceptual and intellectual structure from the aspects of keywords and citation analysis. For example, we can deduce that Chinese articles tend to engage in applied research and lack of theoretical innovations and breakthroughs in this field. Our comparative research results are useful and helpful for the public, policymakers, and researchers in this filed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's economic growth miracle of the past decades has been accompanied by a massive increase in fossil fuel consumption and severe environmental pollution. To control air pollution, China is implementing some green finance policies. Although they have improved the air quality, it is little known whether and how green finance affects the firm labor demand. Taking the 2012 Chinese green credit policy (GCP) as an exogenous setting, this paper adopts the difference-in-difference (DID) method to investigate the effect of green finance on firm labor demand based on A-share listed firms covering 2007–2017. We find that green finance had a significant negative impact on firm labor demand. Specifically, the high-polluting firms with stricter green finance constraints would reduce firm employment by 4.8%. This effect is especially prominent when firms are state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or workers are low-skilled employees. Further evidence indicates that there are the Compliance Cost Hypothesis and Porter Hypothesis in China. In these two effects, the effect of CCH dominates, so the overall effect of green finance is detrimental to corporate performance, which in turn leads to lower corporate employment. Our paper provides the real effect of green finance from the firm labor market. And this paper has strong policy recommendations that the government should reconcile the relationship between air pollution control and employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital inclusive finance has an essential impact on improving the urban green economy efficiency by demonstrating environmental friendliness in agglomerating factors and promoting the flow of factors. Based on the panel data of 284 cities in China from 2011 to 2020, this paper uses the super-efficiency SBM model with undesirable outputs to measure the urban green economy efficiency. Then, the fixed effect model and spatial econometric model of panel data are used to empirically test the impact of digital inclusive finance on urban green economic efficiency and its spatial spillover effect, and the heterogeneity analysis is carried out. This paper draws the following conclusions. (1) The average value of urban green economic efficiency of 284 Chinese cities from 2011 to 2020 is 0.5916, showing a "high in the east and low in the west." In terms of time, it showed a rising trend year by year. (2) Digital financial inclusion and urban green economy efficiency have a high spatial correlation, both showing "high-high" and "low-low" agglomeration characteristics. (3) Digital inclusive finance significantly impacts urban green economic efficiency, especially in the eastern region. (4) The impact of digital inclusive finance on urban green economic efficiency has a spatial spillover effect. In the eastern and central regions, digital inclusive finance will inhibit the improvement of urban green economic efficiency in adjacent cities. In contrast, it will promote urban green economy efficiency in the western regions in adjacent cities. (5) The coverage and depth of digital inclusive finance significantly affect the urban green economy efficiency, while the level of digitization has yet to show a significant effect. This paper puts forward some suggestions and references for promoting the coordinated development of digital inclusive finance in various regions and improving urban green economic efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to their ability to generate green industrial growth, green finance policies are important both in the greening of China's industries and in the promoting of further improvements to its financial system. In this paper, reform pilot zones are used as a quasi-natural experiment with select panel data from 2007 to 2019 taken from 30 provinces in China, and used the DID method to empirically measure the impact of green finance reform on industrial GTFP and its mechanism of action. The findings demonstrate that reforming green finance greatly enhances GTFP of industry during the review period. This result is still valid after carrying out robustness tests. The heterogeneity study finds that the policy plays a large part in fostering GTFP in the middle stage of industrialization but not in the late stage. Further analyses of its transmission mechanism demonstrate that green finance reform mostly fosters industrial green growth through an innovation effect and a structural effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between digital finance and carbon emissions and explores the ecological effects of digital finance. Based on a panel data of 256 cities in China from 2011 to 2018, this paper investigates the impact of digital finance on carbon emissions and its intrinsic mechanisms. First, digital finance significantly suppresses the intensity of regional carbon emission, and the breadth of coverage, depth of use, and degree of digital support of digital finance together curb regional carbon emissions, with the strongest suppressive effect being the breadth of coverage. In addition, the regression results remain significant after a series of robustness tests. Second, it reveals the potential mechanism of digital finance to curb urban carbon emissions. These mechanisms include the three channels: promoting industrial advancement, green technology innovation, and optimizing labor resource allocation. Third, the heterogeneity test finds that the energy saving and emission reduction effects of digital finance are significantly stronger in non-low-carbon pilot cities with low urbanization rates, confirming the emission reduction utility of digital finance development. Therefore, we should take advantage of digital finance to improve the green development of financial services and adopt diverse policy measures according to local conditions to maximize the ecological effects of digital finance on energy saving and emission reduction. In the context of the development strategy of "carbon peaking and carbon neutral," this study has some implications for management in developing a regional green development system supported by digital finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the global ecological environment deteriorating, the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) concept advocates that economic growth and environmental protection must go hand in hand. Green taxations, in particular, are critical to economic development as they serve as a key lever for the government in regulating the national economy and improving environmental quality. This paper aims to examine the pollution reduction effect of green taxation in China. We constructed fixed effect model using provincial panel data from 2012 to 2017 to empirically examine the effect of green taxation—including environment protection tax, consumption tax, resource tax, and vehicle purchase tax—on pollution emissions. The findings show that environmental protection tax has a significant inhibitory effect on exhaust gas emissions but a poor inhibitory effect on wastewater and industrial solid waste emissions. Other green taxations—consumption tax, resource tax, and vehicle purchase tax—do not have an ideal inhibitory effect on pollution emissions. The paper concludes with policy recommendations organized around improving the environmental protection tax, actively promoting the ESG concept, and optimizing the top-level design of the green taxation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intelligent city pilot policy is a major measure in China to promote urban development from factor driven and investment driven to innovation driven. Intelligent city construction can effectively coordinate specialized production factors and information sharing mechanism, promote digital information technology innovation, promote smart industry cluster, and expand ecological scenarios of clean industry application, so as to reduce carbon emissions. This paper reveals the internal mechanism of intelligent city construction to promote carbon emission reduction. Based on the quasi-natural experiments carried out in three batches of pilot construction of intelligent cities since 2012, the difference-in-difference model (DID) is used to identify its impact on urban carbon emissions. The research results show that the pilot construction of intelligent cities is conducive to reducing carbon emissions, which is still robust under multiple scenarios such as placebo test and endogenous test. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the pilot policies have a more significant carbon emission reduction effect on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, non-resource-based cities, and non-old industrial bases. After further quantitative analysis of 917 pilot policy texts based on Simhash algorithm, Jieba word segmentation, and word frequency statistics, it is found that intelligent industry policies reduce carbon emissions by driving data elements agglomeration and optimizing industrial structure, while intelligent government and intelligent people's livelihood policies improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions through green technological innovation. Counterfactual tests using machine learning algorithms show that the later the pilot batch, the better the sustainable carbon emission reduction effect of intelligent city pilot policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal gangue is a by-product of coal, the output of which is as high as 30% of raw coal, whereas only 30% of it is recycled. The leftover remains in the environment from gangue backfilling areas and overlap with residential, agricultural, and industrial areas. Coal gangue accumulated in the environment is easily weathered and oxidized and becomes a source of various pollutants. In this paper, 30 coal gangue samples (fresh and weathered coal gangues) were collected from three mine areas in Huaibei, Anhui province, China. Gas chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC–MS/MS) was used to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze thirty polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs), including 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (16PAHs), preferentially controlled by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), and the corresponding alkylated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (a-PAHs). The results showed that PACs existed objectively in coal gangue, and the content of a-PAHs was higher than that of 16PAHs (average values for 16PAHs ranged from 77.8 to 581 ng/g; average values for a-PAHs ranged from 97.4 to 3179 ng/g). Moreover, coal types not only affected the content and type of PACs but also affected the distribution pattern of a-PAHs at different substitution sites. With the increase of gangue weathering degree, the composition of a-PAHs kept changing; the low ring a-PAHs were more easily diffused to the environment, and the high ring a-PAHs remained enriched in the weathered coal gangue. The correlation analysis showed that the correlation between fluoranthene (FLU) and alkylated fluoranthene (a-FLU) was as high as 94%, and the calculated ratios were not more than 1.5. The basic conclusion is that not only 16PAHs and a-PAHs objectively existed in the coal gangue, but also the characteristic compound belonging to the pollution source of coal gangue oxidation have been discovered. The results of the study provide a new perspective for the analysis of existing pollution sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether the technological finance cooperation pilot (TFCP) policy in China can promote energy efficiency remains under investigated. Using the dataset covering 284 cities in China from 2003 to 2019, this paper adopts the Super-SBM model with undesirable outputs to measure energy efficiency. Based on this efficiency, the Difference-in-Differences model (DID) and Spatial Durbin model (SDM) are employed to discuss the impact of TFCP policy on energy efficiency. Results demonstrate that TFCP policy has significantly promoted energy efficiency. And the conclusion is still valid after the robustness checks and endogenous treatment has been carried out. The impact of the TFCP policy on energy efficiency is heterogeneous, depending on the geographical, administrative, and resource characteristics of cities. To be specific, the promotion effect tends to be pronounced in east-central cities, high-ranking cities, and high-tech cities. Moreover, TFCP policy could significantly improve energy efficiency through the effects of technological innovation, industrial upgrading, and financial development. A further policy spillover analysis shows that TFCP policy has exerted a remarkable incentive influence on energy efficiency locally, while the neighboring cities are inhibitive. To sum up, this research is of important theoretical value and policy-making reference on green economy transformation for cities with differential features and energy utilization capacity, by shedding light on the impacts of such a technological finance cooperation system on energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, excessive emissions of carbon dioxide have further intensified global warming, which poses a great threat to human society. The best way to reverse this situation is to take action to equalize the "carbon emissions" with the "carbon absorption," i.e., carbon neutrality (CN). To better understand the evolution and display a broad panorama of CN research, this paper provides a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of publications in the field of CN from 2006 to 2021. We use the Web of Science Core Collection as the data source, and a total of 633 publications have been retrieved. In the paper, we measure the productivity and influence of publications through recognized bibliometric metrics, and visually analyze publications using VOS Viewer and CiteSpace. The analysis results show that China is the most productive country/region. The study illustrates that in order to reach the goal of CN, it is necessary to reduce carbon emissions such as full using renewable energy. Simultaneously, it is also essential to enhance the "negative emissions" of carbon such as taking advantage of carbon sink and carbon capture, utilization, and storage. This paper provides some references for scholars who are interested or research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boom of building various industrial agglomerations in China has continued for many years. The relationship between industrial agglomeration and environmental pollution is the core issue of this paper. At the same time, green finance is a new financial development model that takes environmental protection as the core, and effectively promotes the sustainable development of the environment, the economy, and society while maintaining its own sustainable development, so green finance is a major direction for future financial development. This paper selects the data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2004 to 2020 as the research object and uses a system-GMM method to verify the relationship between industrial agglomerations, green finance on regional environmental pollution. It provides theoretical reference for improving global climate change and reduces environmental pollution (EP), concludes as follows. (1) Industrial agglomeration can exacerbate EP level in China, and also exacerbates EP in the western region, but the effect of industrial agglomeration on EP in the eastern and central regions has been insignificant. (2) Green finance can improve environmental pollution. The intensity of EP in economically less developed regions is more sensitive to green finance policies. (3) The correlation effect of industrial agglomeration and green finance can improve environmental pollution, i.e., green finance has an important role in improving EP. However, there are significant differences in different regions. The interaction term between industrial agglomeration and green finance with a non-significant positive coefficient in the eastern region, and it is non-significant negative coefficient in the central region, and a significant negative coefficient in the western region. The work has important theoretical value for achieving the goal of regional sustainable development and green transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]