China’s Energy Transition Policy Expectation and Its CO2 Emission Reduction Effect Assessment

Abstract

Measuring the expected impact of China’s energy transition on carbon dioxide (CO2) mitigation and identifying the key influencing factors in different economic sectors will help to provide better policy recommendations for CO2 emission reduction. Based on the prediction results of China’s CO2 emissions in 2030 under the baseline scenario and the target scenario, this study constructs the control group and the treatment group of the energy transition policy quasinatural experiment and then uses the difference in difference (DID) model to evaluate the CO2 emission reduction effect of China’s energy transition policy. The results reveal that the energy transition policy has a significant impact on CO2 emission reduction and helps to achieve China’s 2030 carbon emission reduction target. The impact of energy structure transition on CO2 emission reduction has significant sectoral heterogeneity, which has a positive reduction effect in the industry sector, wholesale and retail sectors, and accommodation and catering sectors, but its reduction effect is not obvious in transportation, storage, and postal sectors. It is suggested that China should implement the sector-differentiated CO2 mitigation strategy, focus on improving the industrial sector’s energy efficiency, and promote the clean, low-carbon transition of energy consumption structure in construction, transportation, storage, and postal industries.

International Trade as a Double-Edged Sword: The Perspective of Carbon Emissions

“…With evidence from 39 major economies, they found that the development of international trade has led to a 5% increase in the interregional flow of carbon emissions, on average. Wang et al (2021) found that China's energy consumption increased due to the expansion of the international trade scale. Shi et al (2020) focused on countries from the Belt and Road region using a threshold model and discovered a nonlinear relation between international trade and carbon emissions.…”

“…China has reduced its carbon emissions by 3,621.11-4,031.52 ten thousand tons, and the United States has reduced its carbon emissions by 214.6-314.59 ten thousand tons. However, the international trade war may also lead to a carbon increase in other countries (Zhang, et al, 2021).…”

Spatio-Temporal Patterns of CO2 Emissions and Influencing Factors in China Using ESDA and PLS-SEM

“…Energy intensity is the energy consumed per unit of output and is used to measure energy efficiency. The higher the level of technological progress, the less energy is wasted [17]. The structure of energy consumption has an important impact on CO 2 emissions.…”

“…Related studies have found that governments affect CO 2 emissions in many ways. First, governments formulate corresponding energy transition and environmental policies to constrain the CO 2 emissions of enterprises and society [17,27]. Second, governments can increase financial expenditure on environmental governance [28] and scientific and technological investment, as well as collect pollution control fees and taxes from enterprises [29] to reduce levels of environmental pollution.…”

Renewable Energy Sources vs. an Air Quality Improvement in Urbanized Areas - the Metropolitan Area of Kraków Case

“…Research shows that actions taken by different countries to support the energy transition have different effects. Many publications related to the issue of CO 2 emissions concern China (Wang et al, 2021;Ouyang and Lin, 2017) which is one of the largest CO 2 emitters in the world. Various models of ensuring the energy security of states are being considered (Lucas et al, 2016;Shadman et al, 2016;Ren and Sovacool, 2015;Augutis et al, 2014;Cherp and Jewell, 2014;Gracceva and Zeniewski, 2014;Francés et al, 2013) as well as different approaches to the treatment and reuse of pollutants (Baier et al, 2018;Chery et al, 2015).…”