Reduction Effect and Mechanism Analysis of Carbon Trading Policy on Carbon Emissions from Land Use

Qiuyue Xia,Bin Zhang,Jie Dong,Lu Li

doi:10.3390/su13179558

Abstract

The reduction of carbon emissions from land use (CELU) is critical for China to achieve carbon neutrality, which may be greatly facilitated by carbon trading policies. Previous studies of the emission reduction effects of carbon trading policies focused mostly on the reduction of carbon source emissions, and there is a lack of research from the comprehensive perspective of carbon sources and carbon sinks. Understanding the effect of carbon trading policies on emission reduction from the perspective of CELU may help to improve the evaluation system of carbon trading policies, as well as provide important implications for the construction of China’s carbon trading market in the context of global carbon neutrality. Here, based on China’s current carbon-trading pilot areas, quasi-natural experiments were conducted by using the CELU data from 2005 to 2017, the synthetic control method (SCM) and the mediation effect model, aiming to empirically study the reduction effect and mechanism of carbon trading policies on CELU. The following main findings were obtained. (1) Carbon trading policies have had a significant reduction effect on the average CELU of the pilot areas by at least four million tons per year during the study period. (2) The carbon emission reduction effect of carbon trading policies has certain regional heterogeneity. (3) Carbon trading policies reduce CELU through the intermediate effect of energy structure, whose contribution rate reaches 30.433%. (4) Carbon trading policies did not achieve the Porter effect of technological progress during the study period, and technological progress has no significant intermediate effect on the reduction of CELU by carbon trading policy. Based on the above findings, the following policy implications can be proposed. Carbon trading and carbon offset should be studied from a comprehensive perspective of land use; regional heterogeneity should be considered when promoting the carbon emission trading system nationwide; and the energy structure should be optimized continuously.

Highlights

Carbon emissions exacerbate global warming and cause increasingly severe environmental problems
When evaluating the overall effect of carbon trading policy, the average value of each variable in the pilot area was selected as the experimental group of the synthetic control method (SCM), and the value of each variable in the nonpilot area was used as the synthetic control group
The left side of the dotted line shows the fitting between the pilot and synthetic pilot areas before the policy implementation, and the right side of the dotted line is the Carbon emissions from land use (CELU) trends of the pilot and the synthetic pilot areas after the policy implementation

Summary

Introduction

Carbon emissions exacerbate global warming and cause increasingly severe environmental problems. The reduction of carbon emissions and the promotion of sustainable development have achieved an international consensus. As a coupling system of human society, the economy and the natural ecological environment, the land is the reservoir of carbon source and carbon sink in terrestrial ecosystems. Carbon emissions from land use (CELU) refer to the release of carbon into the atmosphere from land that is interfered with by human production, ecological or social activities [2,3]. CELU depends on the balance between the carbon source and the carbon sink. Carbon source is reflected by the carbon emission intensity, and carbon sink is determined by the carbon

Methods

Results

Conclusion