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Digital technology is an effective way to realize the carbon neutrality target in China. Therefore, based on panel data at the city level in China from 2006 to 2016, we take the e-commerce pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment, using the staggered difference-in-differences (DID) method to explore the effect of digital technology development on carbon emissions and its transmission mechanism. The conclusion of this paper shows that (ⅰ) the e-commerce pilot policy has significantly reduced carbon emissions. After a series of robustness tests, this empirical conclusion is still valid. (ⅱ) The inhibitory effect of different waves of e-commerce pilot cities on carbon emissions sequentially decreases. The e-commerce pilot policy has a greater effect on reducing carbon emissions in non-old industrial based cities and non-resource-based cities. (ⅲ) Implementing the e-commerce pilot city policy mainly reduces urban carbon emissions by optimizing resource allocation, reducing energy consumption and upgrading the industrial structure. (ⅳ) In addition, implementing the e-commerce pilot city policy has a significant positive carbon-reducing linkage effect with the carbon trading pilot policy and the low-carbon city pilot policy. The findings of this paper provide empirical evidence for carbon emission reduction, which has implications for upgrading urban construction patterns and promoting green urban development., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Increasing attention has been given to the impact of PM2.5 concentration on human health. Exploring the influential factors of PM2.5 is conducive to improving air quality. Most existing studies explore the factors that influence the PM2.5 concentration from the perspective of cities or urban agglomerations, while few studies are conducted from the perspective of climate zones. We used the standard deviation ellipse and spatial autocorrelation analysis to explore the spatial-temporal evolution of the PM2.5 concentration in different climate zones in China during 2000-2018. We used differentiated EKC to construct panel regression models to explore the differences in the influential factors of the PM2.5 concentration in three climate zones. The number of cities with PM2.5 concentration less than 35 μg/m 3 increased in the different climate zones. The center of gravity of the PM2.5 concentration has remained at the junction of the temperate and subtropical monsoon climate zones. The PM2.5 concentration had a high positive spatial autocorrelation in the different climate zones. The high-high clustering areas were located in the south of the temperate monsoon climate zone and the north of the subtropical monsoon climate zone. There was an inverted "U-shaped" curve between the PM2.5 concentration and economic development in China that varied in different climate zones. Identifying the differences in the influential factors of PM2.5 concentration in different climate zones will help to accelerate the implementation of the EKC inflection point., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

With the deepening of trade liberalization, import competition has become increasingly fierce in China. In addition, the Chinese government has been setting higher requirements for environmental quality. Corporate pollutant emission behavior is a subject of broad concern. This paper uses panel data from 2000 to 2007 to study the impact of import competition on the pollution emission intensity of heterogeneous manufacturing enterprises. The main results are as follows. (1) Import competition can inhibit the SO 2 emission intensity of high-productivity manufacturing enterprises. The conclusion remains robust after a series of robustness tests. (2) Heterogeneity analysis shows that import competition significantly impacts corporate pollution emission behavior in eastern regions and frontier industries. (3) The reallocation effect and the technology effect are the main channels through which import competition improves the pollution emissions of high-productivity manufacturing enterprises. This paper provides a more comprehensive perspective for studying the impact of import competition and proposes a new direction for enterprise pollution control., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Plastic recycling is critical for dematerializing of plastics. It has a profound implication on decoupling economic growth from environmental pressure and advancing waste plastic governance domestically and internationally while identifying drivers that might improve decoupling. In this study, plastic consumption and recycling patterns are presented, and the factors influencing the acceleration of dematerialization subsequent to the ban were investigated in the G7 countries and China. The results show that plastic consumption increases from 7.60 million metric tons (mt) to 12.60 mt between 2017 and 2019, and subsequently rapidly decreases to 6.84 mt in 2020. The plastic recycling rate drastically decreased by 21.3% in 2017, and decreased slightly from 2017 to 2020, at an annual rate of 2.9% on average. China's ban shocked the decoupling trends, which showed resilience and motivated the development of robust plastic recycling, and the global recycling transformation pattern accelerated the dematerialization of plastics. Decoupling performances of the G7 and China gradually stabilized in 2019, and all the countries were strongly decoupled in 2020, although decoupling index (DI) fluctuates from 2017 to 2020. Among the recycling-trading drivers, the improvement of waste plastic quality in recycling contributes more to decoupling, the recycling rate shows a more negative decoupling effect on China before the ban, and the population effect is weak relative to other influencing factors. The factors revealed the mechanism of decoupling of plastic consumption in the recycling-trading process, and the recyclability improvement in terms of plastic quality is important for dematerialization., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

According to data from the working reports of China's 244 prefecture-level city governments from 2004 to 2016, we used the instrumental variable method to identify the effects of governments' behavior of setting economic growth targets on regional green technology innovation. The results show that the setting and top-down amplification of economic growth targets have significant inhibitory effects on green technology innovation. The inhibitory effect is more prominent in cities with rapid economic growth and over fulfilment of economic growth targets. In addition, the higher the degree of over fulfilment of the economic target becomes, the more prominent the inhibiting effect is. An impact mechanism analysis reveals that economic growth target constraints affect regional green technology innovation through an industrial structure effect and foreign investment introduction effect., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The power sector is the main contributor to climate change and atmospheric pollution, and reducing the emissions from the power sector is essential for achieving sustainable development. However, few studies have accounted for the emissions from various power-generation technologies. In this paper, a high-resolution inventory of power plants with more than 6 MW accounting for 93% of the national power generation in China is established for the first time. Based on this inventory, the CO2, NOx and SO2 emissions of China's hard coal power, natural gas power, hydropower, wind power, photovoltaic power, biomass power and nuclear power are calculated by using the life cycle assessment method, and their spatial distributions in 2014 are further analyzed. The results show that China's power plants emitted 3.44 E+09 t CO2, 8.56 E+06 t NOx, and 1.19 E+07 t SO2, and the uncertainties were (-18.66%, +19.14%), (-67.10%, +66.41%) and (-88.69%, +87.61%) in 2014, respectively. Renewable-energy power plants accounted for approximately 15% of the national power generation but only contributed less than 1% of the total emissions. Meanwhile, in China's eastern cities, renewable-energy power accounts for the lowest proportion of the total installed capacity. In addition, both the emission amount and intensity were significantly higher in eastern cities than central and western cities. This study will help improve research on the emissions of all power-generation technologies in China and help achieve a comprehensive and systematic emissions reduction strategy., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Faced with severe and growing social inequality among elderly individuals, a more complete understanding of the interconnection between the seasonal migration of the elderly and climate change is clearly needed. This paper tries to clarify the relation between the seasonal migration of the elderly and climate change from a multidimensional perspective. Our study adds to the research on population aging against the background of climate change. This study shows that climate change has a significant impact on regional population aging and that there are significant internal differences between the distribution and scale of the migratory elderly stemming from unequal environmental conditions. Advanced economic conditions and relatively comfortable environments have put some pressure on social endowment services in the three provinces of Northeast China, especially Liaoning Province. With their complex migration mechanism, the fate of the elderly in mainland China is closely intertwined with climatic factors, individual and socioeconomic conditions, traditional cultural backgrounds, etc. A comparatively advanced economy, well-developed endowment resources, and a comfortable environment will help in the development of regional aging resources. Regional inequality and the pursuit of a meaningful life have created different categories of migratory elderly., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Environmental pollution and income inequality have become two salient issues in China. To achieve a green economic transformation, China urgently needs to develop renewable energy technologies to reduce carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions. However, the relationship among income inequality, renewable energy technological innovation (RETI) and CO 2 emissions has not received sufficient attention in the current literature. Based on Chinese provincial panel data from 2000 to 2015, this paper adopts a panel fixed effect regression model and a panel threshold model to perform an analysis on the nonlinear relationship among these factors. The results show that (1) RETI is conducive to reducing per capita CO 2 emissions (PCE). However, with an increase in income inequality, the abatement effect of RETI on per capita CO 2 emissions will be hindered, and RETI will even positively contribute to PCE. (2) The panel threshold model shows that the impact of RETI on PCE has a significant single-threshold effect with regard to income inequality. When income inequality is lower than the threshold value, the impact of RETI on PCE is not significant. However, above the threshold value, that is, within the interval of higher income inequality, an increase in RETI will positively contribute to PCE. Finally, from the perspectives of income inequality and RETI, relevant policy implications are put forward for achieving the transformation of a low-carbon economy., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Quantifying the economic benefits and environmental costs brought about by trade can help reveal the environmental inequalities behind regional trade. There have been many studies on the accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants embodied in regional trade, but there are insufficient studies analyzing the imbalance between the economic benefits and environmental costs embodied in trade. Electricity-related carbon emissions are the main contributor to global warming, explaining more than 40% of carbon emissions both globally and in China. This study uses the network approach and multiregional input-output (MRIO) model to quantify the electricity-related carbon emissions and value added embodied in China's interprovincial trade from 2007 to 2012 and also applies the regional environmental inequality (REI) index to measure the imbalance of electricity-related carbon emissions and economic benefits embodied in such trade. The results show that 20-80% of the electricity-related carbon emissions and 15-70% of the value added of a province's final demand are outsourced to other provinces. The major directions of the net value added and electricity-related carbon emissions embodied in China's interprovincial trade were from north to south and from the center to the east. Unequal bilateral interprovincial trade mainly occurred between inland provinces and developed provinces, and western provinces (such as Guizhou, Gansu, and Ningxia) suffered economic and environmental losses from interprovincial trade. This study can promote understanding of the distribution impacts of domestic trade on environmental costs and economic benefits and provide a reference for China's cross-provincial carbon emission mitigation policies., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)