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China's pulp and paper industry (CPPI) has been always the main carbon emission source in recent years. However, the analysis on influencing factors of carbon emissions from this industry is insufficient. To address the issue, the CO2 emissions from CPPI are estimated in the period of 2005–2019, the driving factors of CO2 emissions are investigated by the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method, the decoupling state of economic growth and CO2 emissions is determined by Tapio decoupling model, and finally, future CO2 emissions are predicted under four scenarios by the STIRPAT model to explore the potential of carbon peaking. The results show that CPPI exhibits a rapid increase and a fluctuating downward trend in CO2 emissions during the period of 2005–2013 and 2014–2019, respectively. The main promoting and inhibiting factors to the increase of CO2 emission are per capita industrial output value and energy intensity, respectively. There are five decoupling states of CO2 emissions and economic growth during the study period, and the CO2 emissions exhibit a weak decoupling state with the industrial output value growth in most years of the study period. It is very difficult to realize the carbon peaking goal by 2030 under the baseline and fast development scenarios. Therefore, efficient low carbon and strong low-carbon development policies are necessary and urgent for the realization of carbon peaking goal and the sustainable development of CPPI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature ignores to consider multiple types of pollutants when analyzing energy efficiency and its convergence. Under this background, using SuperSBM-GML model, the improved entropy method, and convergence model, this paper calculates the green total-factor energy efficiency and its evolution trend of 35 China's industrial sub-sectors considering multiple pollutants, and analyzes its convergence. The results indicate that the average score of industrial green total-factor energy efficiency is low, and there are significant differences among sub-sectors: "Utilization of waste resources" is the highest, while "Manufacture of paper and paper products" is the lowest. The green total-factor energy efficiency shows an overall upward trend from 2006 to 2021, the main driving force comes from technological progress, but numerous sub-sectors have not sufficiently caught up with existing cutting-edge technologies. Specifically, the growth rate of green total-factor energy efficiency in high-energy-consumption sub-sectors is higher than low-to-medium-energy-consumption sub-sectors. There are both σ-convergence and β-convergence in low-to-medium-energy-consumption group, indicating that development of sub-sectors is stable and outstanding. Nevertheless, the high-energy-consumption group only exhibits conditional β-convergence, revealing an imbalance in energy efficiency development. Consequently, formulating the benchmark level of energy efficiency and developing energy efficiency "leader" system are suggested for low-to-medium and high-energy-consumption sub-sectors, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving carbon emission efficiency is crucial for achieving carbon peak and carbon neutrality. This paper analyzes the carbon emission efficiency of Chinese cities using panel data from 275 prefecture-level cities between 2006 and 2020. The super-efficiency SBM (undesirable slacks-based measurement) model of undesired output, combined with kernel density estimation and exploratory data analysis, is employed. This study finds, firstly, from 2006 to 2020, the average efficiency of carbon emissions in Chinese cities declined from 0.53 to 0.48, indicating a downward trend. Secondly, from a temporal perspective, the level of dispersion in urban carbon emission efficiency has become increasingly distinct over time, coupled with a decrease in polarization. Thirdly, in terms of spatial analysis, urban carbon emission efficiency in China shows a positive correlation in a global context. In terms of local spatial correlation, it primarily exhibits high-high and low-low clusters, with a few instances of low–high and high-low clusters. Finally, based on the research findings, this paper proposes suggestions to improve urban carbon emission efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital finance generated by technology empowerment profoundly affects the innovative behavior of micro-enterprises. To estimate how digital finance influences the quantity and quality of green technological innovation, this paper introduces digital finance into endogenous economic growth model and further conducts correlation analysis with the combination of fixed effects model (FE) and panel threshold model (PTM). Moreover, this paper investigates the action mechanism from the perspective of financial constraint and financial cost. The empirical results indicate that digital finance improves the quantity and quality of green technological innovation significantly. Compared with the coverage of digital finance and digital services, the impact of usage depth on green innovation accumulates dynamically superimposed in the long term. The digital finance contributes to correct the mismatch of financial resources and further induces inclusive green innovation in the dimension of ownership, growth cycle, and enterprise scale. Mechanism analysis shows that the relief of financial constraint, environmental information disclosure, and increase of R&D investment are the main paths for digital finance to drive green innovation. With the different thresholds, the dynamic evolution process of green innovation driven by digital finance is characterized by "first quantitative change and then qualitative change." This paper suggests that the integration of technological innovation and digital financial services needs to build an inclusive digital financial service system, cultivate diversified financial formats, and improve the market environment of digital financial services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The maritime sector plays a key role in transportation in the world, and over 90% of world trade is carried by ocean shipping. However, ships are large contributors to global emissions. Hence, a vast majority of research publications have focused on different emission monitoring techniques, which are essential to establishing required policies and regulations that reduce maritime transport emissions. Various documents have been published on monitoring maritime transport emissions affecting air quality since 1977. This paper presents a bibliometric analysis to explore evolution trends, gaps, challenges, and productive countries, as well as the most cited publications with high scholarly impacts. The annual growth of 9.64% in publications demonstrates an increasing interest in reducing maritime vessel emissions. Journal articles constitute 69% of publications, followed by conference papers (25%). China and the USA play a leading role in this field of research. Regarding active resources, the "Atmospheric Environment" journal accounts for the highest relevant publications, H-index, and total citations. Eventually, the temporal evolution of keywords shows the increasing trend towards sustainable maritime transport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon abatement efforts in China are penetrating to sub-national level. Zhejiang province, as the 4th wealthy region in China and important player in global market (e.g., textiles, cloth, petroleum, and chemical products), lacks in-depth study of its climate change mitigation efforts, especially after China's accession to the WTO in 2001. This paper analyzed carbon emissions and intensity in Zhejiang province using most comprehensive and time-series dataset available to date since 2002. Its carbon emissions were growing at a declining speed, and carbon intensity was almost halved. The leading emitters largely agglomerate around Hangzhou Bay, close to Zhoushan Port and Shanghai Port. The growth in absolute emissions primarily arose from higher investment (323.1 Mt) and exports (280.6 Mt), while the slower growth was mainly due to efficiency improvements (− 245.7 Mt) stemming from energy and carbon abatement policies and inflows of emission-intensive products from the rest of China. Similarly, declined carbon intensity was mainly attributed to efficiency improvement. Major contributors were sector S13-Non-metallic minerals, S12-Chemicals, S26-Transport, storage and post, S07-Textiles, and S10-Paper. Economic restructuring played different roles on emissions and intensity during various development stages. Policy implications of the findings are discussed for future developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China, being the world's largest exporter, has now certain environmental commitments such as to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. These commitments of China has raised a reasonable concern regarding the expected reduction in the production and export of pollution intensive goods in the future. Besides China, the most efficient countries in the region to produce these goods are most of the member countries from ASEAN. The current study therefore aims to analyze if in the future, China reduces the production and export of these goods, whether the selected ASEAN countries can be the next choice for the export of pollution intensive goods. Based on the data availability for the period 1990–2019, this study considers five selected ASEAN countries (ASEAN-5). The results are based on the Auto Regressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) bound testing approach to cointegration and Error Correction Modeling (ECM). The aggregate analysis of five pollution intensive goods (pulp and paper (341), industrial chemicals (351), non-metallic minerals products (369), iron and steel (371) and non-ferrous metals (372)) suggests that Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow can significantly increase the export of pollution intensive goods only in case of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. However, there is no significant effect of FDI on the export of pollution intensive goods in case of Philippines and Singapore. The disaggregate analyses of the five pollution intensive goods suggest that in each of the ASEAN-5 countries, FDI inflow can significantly increase the export of pollution intensive goods in some of these industries rather than in all of them. In nutshell, it is concluded that ASEAN-5 countries can be a potential choice for the export of pollution intensive goods in some of the pollution intensive industries but not in all of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on mountain ecosystem services (MES) under the influence of climate change and human activities has gradually become the focus of academic attention in recent years. Here, this study analyzes the research hotspots and frontiers of this field based on metrics including main research forces, core journals and papers, research hotspots and topics by using the methods of bibliometrics and text mining. The results revealed the following: (1) the number of papers is increasing rapidly in recent years. From 2015 to 2019, 929 papers were published, with an average of 185 papers per year. But the average cited times of those papers is declining, dropped from 6.01 in 2016 to 4.2 in 2019. The USA, UK, and China rank the top three of the number of papers. Univ Maryland, Univ Oxford and Univ Wisconsin have the greatest influence, with an average of more than 77 citations per paper; (2) The most cited journals are PNAS, WETLANDS, ECOLOGY, AND SOCIETY, which are cited 191.54, 53.91, and 40.00 respectively. Most papers were published in OA journals including SUSTAINABILITY, WATER, Forests since 2017. Ten core papers undertaking knowledge transfer in this field have been identified; (3) analysis of the keywords found a new trend of integration of natural science and humanities. In two development stages of 2000–2014 and 2015–2019, the research hotspots mainly focused on mountain water resources, forest resources, land resources and the impact of climate change and human activities, and there are obvious differences and characteristics in different stages. The hotspot worthy of attention in the near future is the assessment of mountain ecosystem services capacity and value. This is the first comprehensive visualization and analysis of the research hotspots and trends of mountain ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green bonds, a new green financial instrument, encourage enterprises to achieve high-quality development through green technology innovation. However, a lack of research is currently being conducted into the effect of green bond issuance in China. Can green bonds effectively empower enterprises to green innovation? What is the underlying mechanism? In the context of carbon-neutral strategies, it is significant to answer these questions scientifically. This paper uses a quasi-natural experiment of the launch of the green bond market in China in 2016 to conduct empirical studies based on the panel data of 1 558 non-financial Chinese-listed enterprises from 2015 to 2020 with the multi-period difference-in-difference model. The results show that ① issuing green bonds can significantly empower enterprises' green technology innovation. The empowering effect is mainly for green utility patents rather than green invention patents. This result remains after dynamic heterogeneity analysis, placebo test, and other tests. In addition, the effect has a lag. ② Heterogeneity tests show that this empowerment effect varies across enterprises with different property rights, industries, and regions. ③ In terms of the mechanism of action, green bonds can enhance enterprises' ability to innovate green technology by increasing the proportion of long-term loans and improving their debt structure. This paper broadens the relevant literature on the economic consequences of green bonds and the influencing factors of enterprises' green technology innovation and provides policy suggestions for further improving the analysis of green bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the characteristics of the literature on microalgae-based wastewater treatment during the past 20 years, based on the Web of Science Core Collection database and its scientometric techniques. The results reveal that the literature on microalgae-based wastewater treatment has grown rapidly with 2621 publications and 54,388 citations in total. Most of the document types are journal articles, constituting 80.7% of the total records. China and the USA are the two most active countries, regarding the publications and cooperation in this filed from the viewpoint of the number of publishing papers, total number of citations, and the number of multinational author papers. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is the largest institutional contributor, publishing 2.3% of the papers, followed by the Indian Institute of Technology (2.2%) and Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (2.1%). The most publishing author is Ruan (35 papers) with the highest number of citation (2460 times). "Bioresource Technology" is the most publishing journal with 365 published papers, while 36.2% of the total sample is published in the subject area of "Environmental Sciences Ecology." The most cited paper in the past 20 years is a review of the status of phosphorus removal in wastewater by de-Bashan in 2004. Bibliometric analysis has systematically combed the development system of microalgae-based wastewater treatment in the past 20 years and has a great potential to gain valuable insights for the future development, which provides a supplement to the common content analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has long exercised environmental control through the imposition of sewage charges. The start of the environmental protection tax on January 1, 2018, means that China has entered a new phase of environmental control. Unlike many previous studies on the role of environmental taxes at the firm level, this paper examines whether environmental taxes affect pollution emissions by influencing the behavioral choices of micro-actors. This paper first reviews the Pyrrhic tax, the Porter hypothesis, and the "double dividend effect." We then construct provincial panel data for 30 provinces in China from 2012 to 2019 as a sample, use the environmental protection tax as a natural experiment to evaluate the policy of this environmental protection tax using propensity score matching and difference-in-differences model, investigate the intermediate transmission mechanism of the policy implementation, and then analyze the differences in policy effects between provinces with different levels of economic development. The increased tax burden in 2018 led to a general reduction in provincial pollution emissions in which technological innovation by various groups, including firms and universities, had a mediating role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how National Eco-industrial Demonstration Parks (NEDP) in China affects carbon emission efficiency. The difference-in-differences (DID) strategy is used for analysis. This paper finds that the construction of NEDP is conducive to the improvement of carbon emission efficiency, and the findings remain robust through placebo tests and propensity score matching. Heterogeneity analysis shows NEDP construction has greater utility on carbon efficiency in non-resource-based cities as well as in environmentally friendly cities. The mechanism analysis found that green technology innovation, industrial restructuring, and the relocation of industrial enterprises are effective ways to improve carbon efficiency in NEDP. Finally, this paper finds that the construction of NEDP has obvious spatial spillover effects on carbon efficiency, which can effectively heighten the carbon efficiency level of this locality and nearby areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green economy is the core content of the high-quality economic development, and the digital economy is the new driving force to accelerate the realization of high-quality economic development. In this regard, this paper selects 248 resource-based cities in China from 2011 to 2019 as the research objects and uses the fixed effect model and mediation effect model to test the relationship between digital economy and regional green total factor productivity. We get the following conclusions: First, there is the nonlinear relationship between digital economy and regional green total factor productivity, and this relationship shows the inverted U-shape. Secondly, digital economy can influence regional green total factor productivity through the path transmission mechanism of regional technological innovation, industrial structure, and environmental regulation. Finally, the effect of digital economy on regional green total factor productivity is heterogeneous, especially in the eastern region and cities with high human capital level. Based on the digital economy, the findings of this paper provide theoretical basis and reference suggestions for promoting the green development of regional economy. The government should attach importance to regional green development, actively guide the digital economy to promote green development, accelerate the development of the digital economy, and achieve high-quality economic development finally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The carbon emission trading pilot policy is an important initiative to achieve synergistic economic-environmental development. Based on the data of 268 cities in China from 2006 to 2020, this paper analyzes the impact of carbon emission trading pilot policy on urban innovation capacity by using a time-varying difference-in-difference model. The study shows that, first, the implementation of the CETP improves the innovation capacity of cities, and the robustness test confirms the above findings. Second, the effect of the policy on enhancing urban innovation capacity is heterogeneous between the type of innovation and city type: the promotion of innovation capacity is stronger for utility model patents and non-capital cities. Third, there is a positive spillover effect of the implementation of the CETP on the promotion effect of the urban innovation capacity, which can lead to the improvement of the innovation capacity of neighboring cities. This paper has some reference value for building a unified carbon emission trading market and promoting low-carbon economic development within China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial elements and R&D elements are significant drivers for enhancing regional innovation efficiency. This paper measures financial elements by financial development scale and the marketization level of the financial industry and R&D elements by the inputs and flow of R&D personnel and R&D capital and specifically considers R&D element flow to quantify the consequential spatial spillover effects. Based on provincial panel data from 2008 to 2018, the paper firstly estimates the regional innovation efficiency of China's 30 provincial-level administrative regions using super-efficiency DEA and then conducts an empirical analysis of the influence of financial elements and R&D elements on regional innovation efficiency by the use of the Tobit model and three spatial econometric models. It is found that, by and large, the financial development scale, the marketization level of the financial industry, the inputs of R&D personnel and R&D capital, and R&D capital flow all have significant effects on regional innovation efficiency. Nonetheless, by region, R&D personnel flow in central China can significantly boost regional innovation efficiency while fails in eastern and western China. From the spatial perspective, both financial elements and R&D elements have significant positive spatial spillover effects. Therefore, in order to bolster regional innovation efficiency, it is crucial to improve the allocation of financial elements and R&D elements and build a tight regional collaborative innovation network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) have been extensive concerned. However, few studies have focused on the impact of situational factors on corporate ESG practice decisions. Based on this, using 9428 observations of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019, this paper attempts to explore the impact of local official turnover on corporate ESG practices, and analyzes the boundary effects of this impact from three aspects: region, industry, and corporate. Our results suggest that (1) official turnover can lead to changes in economic policies and redistribution of political resources, which can stimulate companies' "risk aversion motivation" and "development motivation" and thus promote their ESG practices; (2) this effect is more significant in the high degree of government intervention, the high level of industry competition and private corporates. (3) Further test finds that only when the official turnover abnormally and the regional economic development well, official turnover can significantly contribute to corporate ESG. This paper enriches the relevant research on the decision-making scenarios of corporate ESG practices from the macro-institutional perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing carbon emissions is the key to fulfilling the "double carbon commitment" and promoting the green transformation of the economy. The financial sector is the forerunner of change in economic development. The rapid development of digital finance has disrupted the traditional financial operation mode and has had a significant impact on economic development and environmental quality. This paper explores the impact of digital finance development on carbon emissions using carbon emission data from 2011 to 2017 in China's counties and combining it with the Digital Inclusive Finance Index of Peking University. The findings are as follows: (1) The development of digital finance can curb carbon emissions, and this causal relationship still holds through a series of robustness tests. The greater the carbon emissions, the better the carbon suppression effect of the development of digital finance. (2) When regions face strict financial regulation and environmental constraints, the development of digital finance can be more effective in reducing carbon emissions. The existence of a digital divide in general can weaken the disincentive effect of the development of digital finance on carbon emissions. (3) The development of digital finance can promote the development of green finance, enhance the level of green technological innovation, improve green total factor productivity, and transform energy structures, thus curbing carbon emissions. This paper not only enriches the literature on the development of digital finance and the environment but also provides a reference for government departments to improve the development strategy of digital finance and achieve "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green technology innovation is a crucial factor in the global quest for sustainability. In 2017, China approved the establishment of Pilot Zones for Green Financial Reform and Innovations to build and improve the green financial system. Using a difference-in-difference (DID) model, this paper examines the impact of this pilot policy on corporate green technology innovation and its transmission mechanism based on the data of green patents of Chinese A-share listed manufacturing companies between 2014 and 2019. It is found that Pilot Zones for Green Financial Reform and Innovations have contributed to the growth of green technology innovations. This conclusion is confirmed after a series of robustness tests. The pilot policy's promotion of green technology innovations is mainly reflected in the application of corporate green invention patents. However, it is more significant for non-heavy polluting enterprises, high-tech certified enterprises, and large enterprises. The paper also finds that the pilot policy promotes corporate green technology innovation by promoting social financing, talent support, and government financial support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon tariffs are directly linked to carbon performance and have an impact on export sectors. This paper examines the relationship between carbon tariffs and carbon performance based on China's manufacturing sector, helping to visually quantify the impact of carbon tariffs and to adopt more favourable strategies to address the impact. This paper uses data from 28 manufacturing industry segments in China from 2009 to 2019, estimating carbon performance using an SBM model incorporating non-desired outputs. The panel Tobit model is also used to explore the driving role of carbon tariffs and related variables on carbon performance. The results show the following: First of all, China's manufacturing carbon performance is generally on an upward trend but is mainly driven by improvements in the light textile and machinery manufacturing industries. Secondly, in terms of drivers of carbon performance, the imposition of carbon tariffs will increase the carbon performance of China's manufacturing sector. Furthermore, R&D investment is positively correlated with carbon emission performance. The significant positive impact of export dependence is manifested in the light and textile industry. Energy intensity has a significant positive impact on the textile industry and a significant negative impact on the resource processing industry. Environmental regulations have a negative impact on the light textile industry. China should optimize the industrial chain of resource processing industry. At the same time, China should increase R&D investment in emission reduction and product upgrades, encourage the export of light and textile industrial products, increase the import of resource processing industrial products. Also, the government should formulate environmental regulatory policies that are close to the nature of the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate policies could improve air quality, thereby generating health benefits and thus increasing labour input for economic growth. Nevertheless, health benefits are usually overlooked in evaluation frameworks of climate policies. In this paper, a dynamic recursive computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is adopted to define how climate policies are related to air pollution, namely PM 2.5 concentrations. Health benefits of climate policies are divided into reduction of PM 2.5 -related morbidity and mortality. The CGE model results show that both carbon tax and emission trading scheme (ETS) decrease morbidity and mortality; therefore, under climate policies, PM 2.5 -related labour loss decreases, and thus increasing labour input triggers an economic boom. Carbon tax generates more health benefits in short term, while health benefits of ETS policy will gradually increase in long term. Hence, we conclude that regarding health benefits, a long-term ETS policy is preferable to a long-term carbon tax. This finding implies that the recently established nationwide ETS market in China is meaningful, as it will generate more health benefits in future. Nevertheless, the quantified health benefits in this paper still cannot compensate GDP loss induced by climate policy implementations, implying that it is a challenging task to unbiasedly model health benefits of climate policies. Hence, we have recommended that the scopes and contents of health benefits should be expanded in evaluations of climate policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]