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As the world’s top energy consumer and carbon emitter, China’s carbon emissions policies, including the low-carbon pilot initiative (LCPI) implemented in July 2010, have important effects on global climate change. Therefore, accurately assessing the effect of this policy has become extremely important for low-carbon development. This article analyses the impact of implementing LCPI on regional carbon emissions by using Guangdong Province as the study area, which has the largest economic scale, population size and carbon emissions amongst China’s low-carbon pilot provinces. The results suggest that for the entire 2010–2015 period, Guangdong’s carbon emissions were reduced by about 10% due to the implementation of LCPI. This policy produced a significant impact on the carbon emissions from manufacturing industries but showed minimal impact on the carbon emissions from energy production. Unlike previous researchers who relied on estimations, the authors of this work obtained unified carbon emissions data for 1997–2015 from the China Emission Accounts and Datasets and then constructed comparison groups by using the synthetic control method instead of performing a subjective selection. The authors also examined the impact of LCPI on carbon emissions from different sources. This article proposes that policy support and low-carbon action are necessary for reducing regional carbon emissions and that the policies must be constantly adjusted during their implementation. The successful experiences in low-carbon pilots are also worth exploring and promoting in other regions.

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With the rapid development of biofuels, doubts about their sustainability have also been raised.

The rapid economy expansion in China has substantially increased energy consumption. Under the stringent environmental policy and the requirement of green economy development, the accurate assessment and analysis of energy efficiency is an increasingly significant issue for energy development policy making in China. This study uses the weighted slacks-based model (weighted SBM) considering the energy substitutability to evaluate the regional energy efficiency (EE) in 29 Chinese provinces, from 1991 to 2015, and explores the sustainable evolution characteristics of EE by comparative and convergence analyses from different perspectives. The empirical results show that EE has significant geographic differences. On the one hand, EE increases from the west to the east of China, and its volatility has a rising trend over the period 1991–2015. Only the EE in the eastern area had a stable rising trend, and the EE differences are difficult to reduce in the short term. On the other hand, the economic zones in the south of China, such as Central Bohai, Pearl River Delta, and Yangtze River Delta, have higher EE. We also find a significant EE improvement occurred during the Eleventh and the Twelfth Five-Year plans. By means of the convergence analysis of energy efficiency across different areas and economic zones over different time intervals, it is shown that EE in the southeast coast provinces have a better catching-up effect and adjustment rate toward the efficient frontier, while the western inland provinces are less effective over the period 1991–2005. Further, we empirically find that the industry policies including industry transfer policy promote EE globally, but the regional differences and fluctuations in EE remain serious. Certain policy implications are discussed with regard to sustainable regional development and an effective industry transfer policy.

Carbon markets and the digital economy are gaining popularity continuously. Under this context, corporate green innovation should be urgently guided, which is an important subject to be studied and solved with great urgency to achieve harmonious ecological and economic growth. In this study, the data of 836 Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2020 are selected, carbon market and digital transformation are integrated into a unified analysis framework, and the green innovation effect and mechanism of the two and their interaction terms are investigated, not showing consistency with the previous studies about the effect of carbon market or digital transformation on green innovation. The present study suggests that (i) both carbon market policy and digitalization level serve as vital factors in boosting green innovation among high-carbon companies, whereas the synthetic effect of carbon market policy and digital transformation inhibits corporate green innovation behavior. (ii) The influences exerted by carbon market policy, digital transformation, and the synthetic effect on green innovation are dependent on property rights, size, and industry of high-carbon companies. (iii) As revealed by the analysis of mediating effects, financing constraints are the main mechanism of action that leads to a negative correlation between the synthetic effect of the carbon market and digital transformation and green innovation. Besides, R&D investment and environmental information disclosure only affect the action mechanism about digital transformation and carbon market policy, whereas they do not affect the synthetic effect of carbon market and digital transformation. Therefore, to promote green innovation and green transformation of high carbon companies, the government needs to flexibly use market-based environmental regulation tools (e.g., carbon market), strengthen the influence exerted by digital technology in improving innovation quality, and flexibly formulate relevant policies in accordance with the heterogeneity of different objects.