The impact of LCTI on China's low-carbon transformation from the spatial spillover perspective.

Wenchao Li,Jialiang Yang,Jian Xu,Zhengming Wang,Ming Zhang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0242425

Abstract

China has conducted a long-term low-carbon technology innovation (LCTI), but there was a faster increase of CO2 emission in 2017 and 2018 than in 2016, which has lead scholars to doubt the effect of LCTI on CO2 emission. This paper builds a spatial auto regression (SAR) model with provincial panel data from 2011 to 2017 to calculate the spatial spillover effect of China's LCTI on regional CO2 emission. The results show that regional LCTI can reduce the local CO2 emission, but will increase the CO2 emission of adjacent regions due to spatial spillover effect. This produces the uncertainty of the promotion effect of LCTI on China's low-carbon transformation. Therefore, this paper suggests innovation resources should be appropriately and evenly distributed among regions to avoid their agglomeration in few regions.

Highlights

There will be only ten years left for China to honor the pledge to peak its emissions by 2030
The article tests the impact of low-carbon technology innovation on CO2 emission by building a dynamic spatial auto-regression model with the panel data of 30 regions in China from 2011 to 2017
Conclusions and suggestions are as follows: 1. Low-carbon technology innovation can curb regional CO2 emissions, but its overall effect is weak at the national level

Summary

Introduction

There will be only ten years left for China to honor the pledge to peak its emissions by 2030. Low-carbon technology innovation is highly anticipated in China, where many policies have been carried out to promote low-carbon technology innovation (LCTI). Technological patents are the core of LCTI, while low-carbon project revenue reflects the commercial value of the technology innovation. Low-carbon technology patents and the low-carbon project revenue (environmental project) in China have increased a lot (Fig 1), especially in the field of new energy power generation, new energy vehicle, green sharing technology and etc. The growth of China’s CO2 emission is higher in 2017 and 2018 than in 2016. The research conclusion shows that the spatial spillover effect of LCTI in adjacent regions increases the carbon emission in this region, leading to ineffective curb on China’s carbon emission. Relevant policy suggestions are proposed for the development of China’s low-carbon technology innovation

Literature review

Methodology

Ethics statement

Findings

Conclusions and suggestions