Does biogas industrial policy promote the industrial transformation?

Abstract

The development of biogas industry is of great importance to smoothly achieve carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. By manually collecting biogas-relevant policy documents in China from 2006 to 2018, we quantitatively construct the novel Comprehensive Biogas Policy Index (CBPI) to evaluate policy's effectiveness and intensity and investigate the impact of CBPI on Biogas Industrial Transformation (BIT). Following conclusions are drawn. First, China's biogas industry policy boosts industrial transformation, in which 1% increase of CBPI promotes BIT by about 0.1%. Second, the input of manpower, administrative and financial resources help regional BIT. Additionally, in resource-rich regions, biogas policy cannot work effectively as expected, while the effect is opposite in resource-general regions, suggesting the misallocation of resources. Third, personnel and administrative measures effectively promote BIT, except for fiscal and financial measures. Finally, valuable implications are put forward, which may be lightful to other countries.