Can Digital Economy Promote Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction in Heavily Polluting Enterprises? Empirical Evidence from China

Zhang, Rongwu; Fu, Wenqiang; Kuang, Yingxu

doi:10.3390/ijerph19169812

Cited by 23 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 61 publications

(85 reference statements)

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“…However, the carbon-reducing effect of digitalization is controversial. Some scholars [8][9][10] believe that digitalization has a carbon emission reduction effect, while others [11,12] believe digitalization can promote carbon emissions. Therefore, we will discuss these questions in the next section.…”

Section: Understanding Digitalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Digitalization has promoted cleaner production through technological innovation, easing financing constraints, and promoting market competition. This promotion effect is more significant in areas with more developed economies and less government financial pressure [12]. From a global perspective, investment in manufacturing digitization has reduced carbon emission intensity.…”

Section: Digitalization Electricity Consumption and Manufacturing Car...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Digitalization, Electricity Consumption and Carbon Emissions—Evidence from Manufacturing Industries in China

Zhang

Wang

2023

IJERPH

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The development of China’s manufacturing industry is constrained by factors such as energy and resources, and low-carbon development is arduous. Digitalization is an important method to transform and upgrade traditional industries. Based on the panel data of 13 manufacturing industries in China from 2007 to 2019, a regression model and a threshold model were used to empirically test the impact of digitalization and electricity consumption on carbon emissions. The research results were as follows: (1) The digitalization level of China’s manufacturing industry was steadily increasing; (2) The proportion of electricity consumption in China’s manufacturing industries in the total electricity consumption hardly changed from 2007 to 2019, basically maintaining at about 6.8%. The total power consumption increased by about 2.1 times. (3) From 2007 to 2019, the total carbon emissions of China’s manufacturing industry increased, but the carbon emissions of some manufacturing industries decreased. (4) There was an inverted U-shaped relationship between digitalization and carbon emissions, the higher the level of digitalization input, the greater the carbon emissions of the manufacturing industry. However, when digitalization develops to a certain extent, it will also suppress carbon emissions to a certain extent. (5) There was a significant positive correlation between electricity consumption and carbon emissions in the manufacturing industry. (6) There were double energy thresholds for the impact of labor-intensive and technology-intensive manufacturing digitalization on carbon emissions, but only a single economic threshold and scale threshold. There was a single scale threshold for capital-intensive manufacturing, and the value was −0.5352. This research provides possible countermeasures and policy recommendations for digitalization to empower the low-carbon development of China’s manufacturing industry.

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Section: Understanding Digitalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Digitalization Electricity Consumption and Manufacturing Car...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Digitalization, Electricity Consumption and Carbon Emissions—Evidence from Manufacturing Industries in China

Zhang

Wang

2023

IJERPH

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“…The existing research generally believes that the essence of sustainable development is to achieve the coordinated development of economy, society, resources and environment, and digital economy based on modern information and communication technology provides a new opportunity to realize pollutant emission reduction and sustainable development (Zhang et al 2022a ; Han and Liu 2022 ). Specifically, the impact of digital economy development on environmental pollution is mainly reflected in four aspects: Firstly, the penetration of the digital economy within enterprises contributes to the construction of enterprise green production mode, achieving the source control of pollutants.…”

Section: Research Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Can the digital economy development achieve the effect of pollution reduction? Evidence from Chinese Cities

Guo

Zhao

2023

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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As a new economic form, the digital economy is not only empowering new impetus to economic growth, but also reshaping specific business forms of economical operation. Therefore, we conducted an empirical test to verify the impact and mechanism of pollution reduction in the digital economy, based on the panel data of 280 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2019. The results show that, first the development of the digital economy indeed has the positive effect of realizing pollution reduction. The results of mediating effect test indicate the influence mechanism mainly rely on promoting the upgrading of industrial structure (structural effect) and upgrading the level of green technology innovation (technical effect). Second, the results of regional heterogeneity analysis show that the emission reduction effect of digital economy development on four pollutants is characterized by weakness in the east and strong in the west in regional distribution. Third, the development of digital economy has a threshold effect on the level of economic development to achieve its pollution reduction effect. Further identification of the threshold effect indicates that the higher the level of economic development, the better in emission reduction effect.

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“…With the development of the economy, more and more cities have achieved the absolute decoupling of economic growth with carbon emissions and achieved the transition to green and low-carbon development [ 17 ]. A digital economy can promote carbon emission reduction by enhancing innovation capacity, alleviating financing constraints [ 18 ], promoting industrial structure upgrading [ 19 ], and increasing investment in R&D [ 20 ], etc. Transportation is an influential area for controlling carbon emissions, and the choice of travel means, and the increase in road vehicles have a direct impact on the total regional carbon emissions [ 21 , 22 ].…”

Section: Theoretical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Digital Economy Development on Carbon Emission Efficiency: A Spatial Econometric Analysis Based on Chinese Provinces and Cities

Liu

Zhang

Gong

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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In the realistic context of the development of China’s digital economy and carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, to efficiently achieve high-quality economic and green and low-carbon transformation, this paper investigates the impact of digital economy development on the carbon emission efficiency of 30 Chinese provinces and cities from 2011–2019. In this paper, firstly, the digital economy development index and carbon emission efficiency are calculated by the entropy method and the Super-SBM-Undesirable Model. Secondly, the Spatial Lag Model (SAR) and the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) are respectively constructed under the adjacency matrix and the geographic distance matrix to empirically test the spatial impact of the digital economy on carbon emission efficiency. The results show that: the digital economy development and carbon emission efficiency of Chinese provinces and cities both show the spatial distribution characteristics of stronger in the East and weaker in the Middle and West; the digital economy development in Chinese provinces and cities has a significantly positive direct and spatial spillover effect on carbon emission efficiency; there are differences in the direct and spatial spillover effects of various dimensions of the digital economy development on the carbon emission efficiency in Chinese provinces and cities; the direct effect of the digital economy development on the carbon emission efficiency in Chinese provinces and cities has significant regional heterogeneity among eastern, central, and western regions. This paper provides new empirical evidence for developing countries such as China to proactively develop a digital economy to promote energy conservation and emission reduction to realize green and low-carbon transformation.

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Can Digital Economy Promote Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction in Heavily Polluting Enterprises? Empirical Evidence from China

Cited by 23 publications

References 61 publications

Digitalization, Electricity Consumption and Carbon Emissions—Evidence from Manufacturing Industries in China

Digitalization, Electricity Consumption and Carbon Emissions—Evidence from Manufacturing Industries in China

Can the digital economy development achieve the effect of pollution reduction? Evidence from Chinese Cities

Impact of Digital Economy Development on Carbon Emission Efficiency: A Spatial Econometric Analysis Based on Chinese Provinces and Cities

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