Policy Performance of Green Lighting Industry in China: A DID Analysis from the Perspective of Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction

Li Lei,Sen Guo,Kan Wang,Shuai Qiu

doi:10.3390/en13225855

Abstract

As a component of China’s strategic emerging industries, green lighting is an important industry supporting the high-quality and high-efficiency development of China’s economy, and is also an important way to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction. At present, China has basically established a policy framework to promote the development of green lighting industry, but there is no empirical evidence on the performance of existing policies on energy conservation and emission reduction. Based on the development status of China’s green lighting industry, this paper sorts out the milestones of China’s green lighting industry policy and the current status of the framework of the existing green lighting industry development policies, constructs a policy performance evaluation model for China’s green lighting industry based on the difference-in-difference (DID) model, and evaluates the implementation effects of green lighting industry policies in China from the perspective of energy conservation and emission reduction. The empirical results of China’s 85 cities show that the implementation of green lighting industry policies has significantly promoted regional energy conservation and emission reduction. Finally, this paper puts forward targeted policy recommendations to provide policy support for the transformation of China’s green lighting industry from “large” to “strong”.

Highlights

Since the 19th century, the continuous exploitation and consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas have supported the industrialization of the global economy [1]
This research is mainly to test the policy effects of the solid-state lighting (SSL) industry, so the analysis focuses on the DID estimator, so as to obtain the influence of the SSL industry policy on different explained variables
The DID statistic corresponding to carbon emissions per unit of GDP (Y3) is −13.7334 (p = 0.0769), and the assumption of Time*cities for policy implementation (City) coefficient = 0 is rejected at the significance level of 10%, that is, cities with perfect SSL industry policies will reduce their carbon emissions per unit of GDP

Summary

Introduction

Since the 19th century, the continuous exploitation and consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas have supported the industrialization of the global economy [1]. China’s SSL industry, this paper sorts out the milestones of China’s green lighting industry policy and the current status of the framework of green lighting industry development policies, and constructs a policy effect evaluation model for China’s green lighting industry to evaluate the policy implementation performance from the perspective of energy conservation and emission reduction. By employing the DID model, this paper constructs an evaluation model for the implementation performance of China’s SSL industry policy, and empirically measures and analyzes the impacts of China’s SSL industry policy on regional energy conservation and emission reduction based on relevant data from 85 cities in China.

China’s Green Lighting Industry Development Status and Policy Framework

Existing

Evaluation

Model Hypothesis and Sample Data

The Explained Variable

Explaining Variables

Control Variables

Descriptive Statistical Analysis of Variables

Estimation Results of DID Model

Robustness Test of Estimation Results

Parallel Trend Test

Time Point Inspection of Policy Implementation