Plastic wood as an element for environmental sustainability

Digital finance provides a premises guarantee for green technology innovation, and effective environmental regulation helps to achieve green and sustainable development. This article selects Chinese urban panel data from 2011 to 2019 to explore the impact mechanism of the influence of digital finance and environmental regulation on the innovation capacity of green science and technology. It is found that extensive financing channels and the strong information-matching ability of digital finance have a significant promoting effect on local green science and technology innovation. Moreover, government environmental regulation not only facilitates the development of green technology innovation locally and in nearby regions, but also strengthens the utility of digital finance in driving green science and technology innovation. Further research found that the influence of digital finance and environmental regulation on the ability of green science and technology innovation has regional heterogeneity, and only digital finance in Central China can promote green science and technology innovation in both local and adjacent areas. Therefore, the government should continue to promote the development of digital finance, optimize environmental regulations by increasing environmental protection subsidies and creating a green innovation environment, and further stimulate willingness to innovate green technologies. At the same time, it is also important to note the coordinated development and governance with neighboring regional governments.

In the era of green economic development, green finance serves as a crucial catalyst for green technological innovation, and both may significantly drive the upgrading of industrial structures. This study combines green finance, green technological innovation, and industrial structure into a research framework, analyzing data from 29 Chinese provinces (2003–2020) to empirically assess their impacts on China’s industrial structure using a two-way fixed-effects model. The results show the following: first, green finance and green technological innovation can significantly promote the upgrading of China’s industrial structure directly and synergistically, a finding corroborated by various robustness tests. Secondly, heterogeneity analysis reveals that there is a “path-dependency effect” in the development of green finance and technology innovation: in areas with higher population density, more developed technological markets, and lower fiscal pressure, the synergistic promotion of the upgrading of industrial structure is stronger. Thirdly, further research indicates that green finance and technology innovation impact the upgrading of industrial structure variably under command-and-control, market-incentive, and voluntary environmental-regulation tools. The most effective policy is the voluntary regulation tool, which involves higher levels of public participation. This study offers valuable insights for fostering green technology innovation, refining environmental policies, and enhancing the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure.

In the context of today’s global environmental challenges, manufacturing enterprises are gradually taking green technology innovation as a strategy to enhance sustainable development ability. This study discusses the application of hybrid intelligent technology in promoting green technology innovation decision-making in manufacturing enterprises. Through data preprocessing and model construction, it is found that energy consumption, emissions, standard compliance, environmental quality and market response are closely related to the green technology innovation score of enterprises. The results show that efficient energy management and active compliance with environmental standards have a significant impact on improving the environmental performance and technological innovation of enterprises. The market’s positive response to green technology has significantly promoted the rapid development and application of the technology. This study not only provides manufacturing enterprises with strategy and decision support for green technology innovation, but also provides policy makers with insights for promoting sustainable development. Through in-depth analysis, this paper emphasizes the importance and effectiveness of comprehensive application of hybrid intelligent technology in the process of green technology promotion.

Does the coupling of digital and green technology innovation matter for carbon emissions?

Based on the panel data of 283 cities in China from 2009 to 2018, this paper analyzes the effect of urban green scientific and technological innovation enhancement on hazardous air pollutants using the GS2SLS method, which simultaneously controls for model endogeneity and spatial spillover effects and reveals the transmission mechanism of urban green scientific and technological innovation level. It was found that (1) There is a significant spatial spillover effect of hazardous air pollutants between regions, both in China as a whole and in the eastern, central, and western parts of the country, and the spatial spillover effect of hazardous air pollutants is significantly greater in the eastern and central parts of China than in the western parts. (2) Green technological innovation has a significant inhibitory effect on hazardous air pollutants in cities in eastern and central China. An extended study found that the improvement in green technology levels in innovative cities has a better effect on controlling hazardous air pollutants than in non-innovative cities. (3) The energy- saving and green economy effects have a mediating influence on the effect of green technological innovation on hazardous air pollutants in cities, and the simultaneous occurrence of these two effects in green technological innovation serves to enhance the transmission of hazardous air pollutants in order to facilitate the long-term management of haze.

Under the guidance of a high-quality development strategy, upholding the long-term concept of green development is the foundation allowing polluting companies to resist external environmental threats and retain their legitimate business statuses. However, the top managers of companies do not always hold long-term perspectives. To this end, we investigate the impact of management myopia on green technological innovation and its mechanism of action for heavy polluters using zero-inflated Poisson regression analysis for 2007–2020 for A-share listed heavy polluters. The empirical results show that the logarithmic value of green technological innovation decreases 1.251 units for each 1-unit increase in the management myopia level demonstrated by heavily polluting enterprises. Moreover, these results are more significant in heavily polluting enterprises with high management shareholding and those that receive more government subsidies. However, managerial myopia is suppressed in heavily polluting firms with many independent directors and institutional investors. A further study found that managerial myopia had the most significant negative impact on green technological innovation for heavy polluters in the central region, and each 1-unit increase in the managerial myopia level decreased the firm’s green technology innovation level by 3.577 units. The findings of this paper have important implications for heavily polluting firms seeking to improve their senior management appointments and governance structures, promote green technology and technological innovation, and achieve high-quality corporate development.

How does heterogeneous green technology innovation affect air quality and economic development in Chinese cities? Spatial and nonlinear perspective analysis

On the goals of sustainable production and the conditions of environmental sustainability: Does cyclical innovation in green and sustainable technologies determine carbon dioxide emissions in G-7 economies

Several economies have acknowledged that environmental degradation poses a serious danger to worldwide sustainable production and consumption. Policy makers concur that the increased use and production of carbon-intensive technologies has intensified the detrimental consequences of carbon dioxide emissions. In response, a number of nations have reacted by enacting stringent regulations and encouraging green technology innovations across corporate and governmental organizations. Evidence that already exists suggests that research and development is a cyclical process; nevertheless, the non-linear influence of shocks in research and development and innovation in green technologies on CO2 emissions in the Nordic nations has not been well investigated. Using panel data from 1995 to 2019, this research explores the asymmetric link between innovation in green technologies and CO2 emissions. The cointegration link between the chosen variables was validated using the Westerlund cointegration test and the Johansen–Fisher panel cointegration test. The findings of both tests confirm the presence of cointegration association between dependent and independent variables. The outcomes of CS-ARDL revealed that negative shocks in creating green technologies contribute to carbon dioxide emissions during recessions. Second, the findings supported the notion that innovation in green technology may reduce carbon dioxide emissions during times of economic expansion. Thirdly, the GDP increases the CO2 emissions, but the usage of renewable energy decreases CO2 emissions. In addition, the robustness analysis validated the consistency and precision of the existing findings. In summary, the findings suggest that the link between advances in environmentally friendly technologies and levels of carbon dioxide emissions were inversely proportional.

Innovation in enterprise green technologies is the main engine and a key factor in promoting China to achieve high-quality economic and social development. This study investigates the effects of government innovation subsidies on Enterprises' green technological innovation using panel data of Chinese A-share listed firms in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2023 as a sample. The study shows that government innovation subsidies can enhance Enterprises’ green technological innovation. Following some robustness tests, this conclusion remains valid. Mechanism tests show that government subsidies enhance the degree of innovation in green technologies for businesses by inhibiting managerial myopia. The heterogeneity results indicate that government innovation subsidies are more obvious on the green technological innovation level of state-owned enterprises and enterprises in the eastern region. The findings of the study enrich the theoretical analysis of government innovation subsidies and enterprises’ green technological innovation and provide an essential guideline value for the formulation of government subsidy distribution methods and assessment mechanisms, the enhancement of enterprises’ internal drive for green innovation, and the realization of high-quality development of enterprises.

Improving energy efficiency is an important pathway for the development of green and low-carbon economy. Based on the evidence from China’s green finance reform pilot zone, we apply the data of Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2005 to 2020 to analyze the action mechanism among green finance, technological innovation and energy efficiency. We find that green finance effectively promotes energy efficiency. Moreover, the analysis of action mechanism reveals that while green finance can drive green technology innovation, only high-quality green technology innovation (green invention patents) can significantly increase energy efficiency. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that green finance has a more significant effect on increasing energy efficiency in regions with large-scale economic development and weak environmental regulation. Furthermore, digital technology can amplify the driving effect of green finance on energy efficiency, and the higher the level of digital technology development, the greater the driving effect of green finance. The findings provide empirical evidence and policy implications for building a market-based green financial system and promoting green and efficient development in regions.

A step toward the attainment of carbon neutrality and SDG-13: Role of financial depth and green technology innovation

Facing increasingly severe environmental pollution and resource scarcity, China has accelerated its pace of green and low-carbon transformation. Green technological innovation helps economic development by reducing ecological pollution and lowering resource consumption. As an important factor of production for social development, the labor force plays a very significant role in optimizing the economic development structure of our country and achieving high-quality leapfrog development. This article explores the relationship between the allocation of labor resources and green technology innovation based on the aforementioned practical motivations, from both theoretical mechanisms and empirical perspectives. Using provincial panel data from China between 2000 and 2021, a spatial Durbin model was constructed to empirically test the spatial spillover effects of labor resource allocation on green technology innovation and to draw relevant conclusions. Subsequently, to further investigate the heterogeneous impact of labor resource allocation on green technology innovation, China was divided into three major regions—eastern, central, and western—and empirical model tests were conducted on separate samples. The following conclusions have been drawn: Over time, during the 22 years from 2000 to 2021, China's overall labor resource allocation has shown an overall upward trend; China's green technology innovation capability has significantly improved, but regional development is uneven, with a large gap in development between the eastern, central, and western regions; through the study of the spatial Durbin model on the impact of labor resource allocation efficiency on green technology innovation, the results indicate that labor resource allocation has a significant main effect and spillover effect on green technology innovation, meaning that the improvement in labor resource allocation efficiency will promote the increase in the level of local green technology innovation, while the decline in labor resource allocation efficiency will inhibit the increase in the level of local green technology innovation; the impediment effect of the decline in labor resource allocation efficiency on regional green technology innovation varies significantly across different regions, with the central region being the most prominent, followed by the western region, and then the eastern region. Based on the conclusions, the following suggestions are made: Regions should strengthen cooperation and exchanges to promote the coordinated development of green technology innovation. Eastern provinces and cities with a higher level of green technology innovation should lead the surrounding provinces and cities with weaker development, actively engage in cooperation and exchanges in infrastructure and green technology, and establish a more orderly and open green technology trading market, thereby promoting the coordinated development of green technology innovation between regions; adopt market-oriented approaches to remove barriers to the autonomous and orderly flow of labor factors. Give the market a decisive role in resource allocation, reasonably play the role of the government, promote the rational and orderly flow of capital and labor resources between regions, and improve the efficiency of resource allocation.

Green technology innovation is an effective driving force to achieve the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure. Environmental regulations principally behave in guiding green technology innovation activities. Based on the Super-Sbm-Dea efficiency model with undesirable output, this paper estimates the provincial-level efficiency of green industrial technology innovation (Gtie) in China from the aspects of technology development, technology transformation and industrial innovation value chain (IVC) from 2005 to 2015, and analyzes its dynamic trend with kernel density function. The conclusions are as follows: 1) Gtie is low and on the rise generally, and tends to decrease in the stages of technology development, achievement transformation and industrialization; in the stage of technology development, the gap between the eastern region and other regions of China tends to increase, while Gtie is on the contrary in the other stages. 2) Gtie spatial spillover is obvious. In the traditional panel model, the effects of command and public environmental regulations are obvious, while the roles of FDI and market regulations are opposite, and the impact of openness and economic development level is not significant. 3) Based on the analysis of Durbin model, market, public regulations and openness improve the efficiency directly. However, economic development level shows significant inhibition effect, while the role of the command regulations and FDI are not significant.

Regional green technological progress is an important driver of regional green technology innovations. To explore in depth the impact of green finance and international technology spillover on regional green technology innovation, this study incorporates green finance, international technology spillover, and green technology innovation into the same analytical framework. In addition, based on a new perspective of regional innovation capabilities, this study analyzes the impact of green finance and international green technology spillovers on green technology innovation. The data were collected in 30 Chinese provinces from 2003 to 2019 and analyzed by a panel fixed-effects model. The interaction between green finance, international technology spillover, and regional innovation capability was investigated to understand the impact of each interaction on green technology innovation. Second, regional innovation capability was used as an intermediary variable to identify its underlying mechanism. Finally, the spatial spillover effect of green technology innovation was analyzed using the spatial Durbin model. We found that: (1) green finance, import trade, outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), and regional innovation capability can promote regional green technology innovation, while inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) has an inhibitory effect on the innovation; (2) the interaction of green finance, international technology spillovers, and regional innovation capacity positively impacts green technology innovation; (3) green finance and international technology spillovers can promote green technology innovation by promoting regional innovation capabilities; (4) and green technology innovations have spatial spillover effects, and innovations in one region can promote the growth of green technologies in adjacent regions. This study provides a reference not only for China but also for other developing countries to promote green technology advancement and achieve sustainable development goals.