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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.)

Large-scale population migration accompanied by rapid urbanization is expected to cause the spatial relocation of air pollution because of heterogeneous energy use and consumption preferences of rural versus urban areas in China. In this study, we adopted an integrated approach by combining a population migration model and environmentally extended input-output analysis to quantify impacts of rural-to-urban (RU) and urban-to-urban (UU) migrations on emissions of NO x , SO 2 , and primary PM 2.5 in China. Results indicate that population migration increases NO x (1.42 Mt), SO 2 (1.30 Mt), and primary PM 2.5 (0.05 Mt) emissions, accounting respectively for 5.4, 4.8, and 0.4% of China's total in 2012. RU migration, involving 54% of the migrating population, significantly increases NO x and SO 2 emissions because of high urban indirect per-capita emissions from consumption and investment. RU migration influences negligibly primary PM 2.5 emissions reflecting the small rural-urban difference in per-capita emissions. Interestingly, UU migration, mostly from inland to coastal provinces, leads to a slight emission decrease for the three pollutants, attributable to the greener development in coastal cities. A significant emission growth can be traced back to heavy and utility industries, suggesting that future emission control of these sectors should reduce the exposure to air pollution of the growing urban population.