Abstract
How to improve the industrial total-factor carbon emission performance (TCPI), or total-factor carbon productivity, through industrial structural adjustment, is crucial to China’s energy conservation and emission reduction and sustainable growth. In this paper, we use a dynamic spatial panel model to empirically analyze the effect of industrial structural adjustment on TCPI of 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2015. The results show that most of the provinces with high TCPI are located in the eastern coastal areas, while the provinces with relatively low TCPI are to be found in the central and western regions. The spatial auto-correlation tests show that there are significant global spatial auto-correlation and local spatial agglomeration characteristics in TCPI. The regression results of the dynamic spatial panel models show that at the national level, the structure of industrialization, the industrial structure of heavy industrialization, the coal-based energy consumption structure and the endowment structure have significant negative effects on the improvement of TCPI. The expansion of industrial enterprise scale, on the other hand, is conducive to an improvement in TCPI while the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) structure and ownership structure on TCPI are not significant. At the regional level, there are certain differences in the effects of different types of industrial structural adjustment on TCPI.
Highlights
Since the reform and opening up, China’s economy has achieved rapid development, but it is accompanied by increasing environmental pollution
Hao et al (2015) used the generalized moment method (GMM) estimators to test the convergence of carbon intensity in China; the results showed that the value added to gross domestic product (GDP) by secondary industry was not conducive to the convergence of carbon intensity
In terms of its decomposition, we find that the improvement in technological efficiency and technical progress and the decrease in technology gap have jointly promoted an improvement in TCPI; technical progress has played a major promoting role
Summary
Since the reform and opening up, China’s economy has achieved rapid development, but it is accompanied by increasing environmental pollution. As the largest carbon emitter in the world, China is actively participating in the framework of international climate cooperation and taking various measures to reduce carbon emissions. At the 2009 World Climate Conference, the Chinese government announced that the carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) would be reduced by 40–45% by 2020 relative to 2005 levels. The 13th Five-Year plan explicitly put forward two binding targets that the energy consumption per unit of GDP, and the carbon emissions per unit of GDP would be reduced by 15% and 18% respectively by 2020 relative to 2015 levels. China has been adopting a relative carbon reduction strategy to reduce carbon emissions, that is, continuously
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
