Evaluating the CO2 abatement effects of low-carbon city policy in China: a quasi-natural experiment

Qiangyi Li,Fuxia Yang,Xiaojian Xiang,Fei Xu,Mian Yang

doi:10.1186/s42162-021-00167-3

Abstract

The formulation and implementation of Low-Carbon City Policy (LCCP) is an essential initiative for China to build its low-carbon society. Based on the panel data of 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2016, this study evaluates the effects of LCCP implementation on pilot cities’ carbon emission performance using difference-in-differences method, and then the mechanism has also been examined with a mediating effect model. The results show that: first, the LCCP implementation has increased the carbon emission performance of the pilot cities significantly, indicating that it is an effective way to promote the low-carbon transformation of Chinese cities. Second, the positive effects in CO2 performance resulting from LCCP demonstrate significant heterogeneity: in general, the cities in east China, with higher economic development level and in a larger size, achieve more significant CO2 emission reduction than their respective counterparts. The results on the mechanism test imply that the LCCP helps improve pilot cities’ carbon emission performance in three ways, including reducing energy consumption, updating the industrial structure, and promoting technological progress. Finally, some useful policy recommendations are put forward to promote China’s low-carbon city construction.

Highlights

Global climate change caused by the excessive consumption of fossil energy has attracted more and more attention from the international community (Cole et al 2013; Lemoine and Rudik 2017; Gökgöz and Güvercin 2018)
Given that cities have become the significant battlefields for energy saving and CO2 emission reduction, the Chinese government launched the first batch of pilot low-carbon cities in 2010, followed by the second and third installments of pilot low-carbon cities in 2012 and 2017, respectively (Tang et al 2018b; Chen et al 2021)
Models (1) and (2) show the results of the scale effect. It can be seen in Model (1) that the coefficient of the interaction term is negative and statistically significant at the 1% critical level, indicating that the Low-Carbon City Policy (LCCP) implementation can effectively reduce electricity consumption in pilot low-carbon cities

Summary

Introduction

Global climate change caused by the excessive consumption of fossil energy has attracted more and more attention from the international community (Cole et al 2013; Lemoine and Rudik 2017; Gökgöz and Güvercin 2018). It can be seen in Models (1) ~ (3) in Table 5 that all the regression coefficients of the interaction term are negative and statistically insignificant, indicating that the assumed policy implementation year does not affect pilot cities’ carbon emission performance.

Results

Conclusion