Abstract
Cities serve as the epicenter of energy consumption, and urban energy transition (UET) is a pivotal prerequisite for achieving carbon peaking and neutrality goals. Leveraging the quasi-natural experiment of China's New Energy Demonstration City Construction (NEDCC), this paper evaluates its impact on UET based on balanced panel data spanning 272 cities from 2006 to 2022. Employing the difference-in-differences model, our estimates underscore NEDCC's facilitative role in promoting UET, a finding corroborated by a series of robustness tests. Mechanism examinations reveal that NEDCC advances UET by enhancing government strategic guidance, fostering green technological innovation, promoting industrial structural upgrading, and optimizing resource allocation efficiency. Furthermore, in cities with higher administrative tiers and more advanced digital finance, NEDCC exerts a more pronounced effect on UET. Conversely, cities endowed with richer resources and pursuing more ambitious economic growth targets exhibit weaker responses to NEDCC's UET-boosting influence. Additionally, NEDCC's demonstration effect surpasses its diffusion effect on neighboring cities, generating a positive spatial spillover that propels their energy transitions. This study offers a novel policy lens for advancing UET.
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