Abstract
Current research on technological progress does not focus on whether there is a biased selection of technological progress based on the resulting pollutant emissions and the emission reduction effect. This paper measures green total factor productivity for 30 provinces in China from 2004–2018 and tests whether technological progress is selectively biased towards the pollutants emitted. The results find a selective bias of technological progress on pollutant emissions, and there is also heterogeneity in the selective bias across regions. The current level of technological progress is on the right side of the inverted U-shaped inflection point for SO2 and PM2.5 and the left side of the inverted U-shaped inflection point for CO2. The improvement of technological progress can reduce the emissions of SO2 and PM2.5. Still, the results indicate that the reduction effect of these two pollutants originates from the treatment process rather than reducing the source of the production side. The inability of technological advancement to reduce CO2 emissions suggests some carbon lock-in in China’s technological advancement. The Chinese government should increase the proportion of new energy applications and reduce the production methods of polluting industries to reduce pollutants effectively.
Highlights
Current research on technological progress does not focus on whether there is a biased selection of technological progress based on the resulting pollutant emissions and the emission reduction effect
The green total factor productivity and its decomposition terms for China as a whole and for each province are shown in Table 3, and the year-by-year averages are shown in Table 4 and Figure 2
The results show that CO2, PM2.5, SO2, and technological progress all show an inverted U-shaped relationship, indicating a significant increase and decrease between pollutants and technological progress
Summary
Current research on technological progress does not focus on whether there is a biased selection of technological progress based on the resulting pollutant emissions and the emission reduction effect. Since the reform and opening up, China’s economy has been in a rough economic development model for many years, making China’s environmental pollution problem increasingly serious. In 2011 and 2015, several Chinese provinces experienced PM2.5 explosions with pollution levels reaching up to 1155 μg/m3 , and serious environmental pollution problems will pose a significant threat to the health of residents [4,5]. The environmental pollution problem poses a significant threat to the quality of China’s economic development [7,8,9]. In the face of severe environmental problems and the need to transform the economic development model, China has continued to transition to a greener economy in recent
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