Abstract
It has become an urgent issue for all countries to ease the sharp conflict between economic growth and ecological conservation. The fundamental way to achieve low-carbon economic growth is to make the energy consumption structure upgrade and develop towards a cleaner direction. Standing at the point of clean production, this study empirically analyses the nonlinear mechanism of the transformation of energy consumption structure on China's regional carbon productivity by using the threshold model based on the inter-provincial data from 2009 to 2017 (30 provinces in China). The research shows that there are significant differences in cleaner production levels in different parts of China. In contrast, the cleaner production capacity in most regions has been significantly improved during the sample period. It shows the energy consumption structure transformation has a remarkable double threshold effect on regional carbon productivity in China. While clean production keeps crossing the threshold value, the effect direction of energy consumption transformation on regional carbon productivity changes from negative to positive, with both the coefficient value and significance increasing. According to the research results, the paper focuses on adjusting energy resource consumption and improving the clean production level. Eventually, some policy inspirations are proposed for the lower emissions and sustainable process of the Chinese economy.
Highlights
The current world energy structure dominated by coal and oil has brought a series of global energy and environmental problems such as acid rain and ozone layer destruction
Many of the central and western regions in China contain a mass of low-carbon energy, the advantages of energy resources cannot be turned into advantages of economic development because the clean production technology does not meet the extraction standards, or the cost is too high for enterprises to afford
In recent years, countries in the world have entered a stage of substantial energy transition and economic restructuring
Summary
The current world energy structure dominated by coal and oil has brought a series of global energy and environmental problems such as acid rain and ozone layer destruction. The possible marginal contributions of this paper are as follows: First of all, based on China’s inter-provincial panel data from 2009 to 2017, we measured the level of cleaner production in different regions and conducted a systematic analysis on it This helps to reveal the true level of cleaner production in the region and the significant differences between regions Secondly, this paper breaks through the single research perspective of studying the impact of the energy transition on environmental pollution or economic development. It considers the complex nonlinear mechanism of the energy transition on carbon productivity under the threshold of different clean production levels in different regions This helps to reveal the path of the energy transition that drives the improvement of carbon productivity, and provides an effective reference for exploring the power source, path selection, and policy design that promote the improvement of carbon productivity.
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