Carbon emission reduction effect of China's low-carbon energy transition policy: An empirical analysis based on policy quantification

Abstract

To better address climate change and environmental pollution, it is of great practical significance to comprehensively evaluate the impact of low-carbon energy transition policies on carbon emission reduction. This paper conducts a policy quantitative evaluation of low-carbon energy transition policies from three dimensions: policy intensity, policy objective, and policy instrument. On this basis, the ridge regression model is used to analyze the carbon emission reduction effect of policies. The results show that (1) changes in policy quantities mainly cause the evolution of total policy effectiveness. The government's emphasis on low-carbon energy transition has fluctuated. (2) The two policy objectives of optimizing the use of fossil energy and developing a low-carbon concept are less synergistic with other policy objectives and neither has a significant impact on carbon reduction. (3) The government prefers to adopt command control policy instruments, but their actual carbon emission reduction effects are inferior to that of economic incentive policy instruments. These findings can provide a decision-making basis for the government to further formulate and optimize policies.