Reducing carbon emissions is the top priority for mankind for dealing with climate issues. The Chinese government selected 30 demonstration cities in three batches and provided these cities green special transfer payment funds for three years to build green projects and achieve energy saving and emission reduction (ESER). This policy provides a great opportunity to study whether green transfer payments play an important role in carbon reduction, which has received little attention before. Additionally, the central government set a series of fiscal performance assessment indicators, including the ESER effect, the completion of green projects, and long-term mechanism construction in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the use of funds. This article creatively conducts theoretical analysis from the perspective of performance assessment, takes ESER special transfer payment policy as a quasi-natural experiment, and uses the panel data of 284 cities in China from 2007 to 2017 and 2019 to verify the impact of the green transfer payment on carbon emissions in and after demonstration periods and its mechanisms with the staggered DID method and the new DID Multiplegt (DIDM) model. This article found that green transfer payments could reduce carbon emissions in demonstration cities, and this effect still existed even after policy withdrawal. Mechanism analysis further corroborates that the carbon-reduction effect of green transfer payments could be achieved by increasing the urban green area and improving energy efficiency. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that green transfers have a greater carbon reduction effect on demonstration cities, which receives more green transfer payment funds and has a higher level of financial development. Recommendations related to setting proper performance assessment ESER indicators include improving the management of ESER transfer funds and maximizing the cost–benefit ratio of fiscal funds, which are proposed according to the research conclusions.
The green energy structure transition is an effective means to achieve carbon emission reduction and sustainable energy development in the long term. Whether the carbon emissions trading scheme, a typical market-oriented environmental regulation, can realize a green energy structure transition has attracted widespread attention. Rather than focusing on the macro-effects of the carbon emissions trading scheme, this paper explores its effect on green energy structural transition in the power sector, which is a major carbon emitter by consuming non-renewable energy. With the multi-period difference-in-differences method, this study manually collects a panel data set of 103 listed power plants from 2011 to 2020 for a total of 1,030 samples and investigates the effect of the carbon emissions trading scheme on the proportion of clean energy power generation. The corresponding mechanism and heterogeneous effects are also examined. The results reveal: 1) The carbon emissions trading scheme increases the proportion of clean energy power generation significantly. This improvement is achieved by increasing clean energy power generation and decreasing thermal power generation. 2) Power companies to which power plants belong are private-owned and have lower debt-to-asset ratios and higher fixed asset ratios, or in regions with a high development level or strong environmental law enforcement, they are found to be more responsive to carbon emissions trading schemes. 3) Green technological innovation is the primary path for transitioning to a green energy structure, but it is not the only path.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.