The impact of digital transformation on low-carbon development of manufacturing

Abstract

Objective: To measure the low-carbon development level and digital transformation degree of China’s manufacturing industry, and to examine the impact of digital transformation on low-carbon development.Methods: This paper uses Super Slack Based Measure (SBM) model and multi-regional input-output model to measure the low-carbon development level and digital transformation degree of 17 manufacturing industries in 30 provinces of China from 2012 to 2018, and uses high-dimensional fixed effect model and mediation model to study the impact of digital transformation on low-carbon development.Results: 1) During the study period, China’s manufacturing industry showed an upward trend in terms of low-carbon development level and digital transformation, but there were significant regional and industrial disparities. 2) Digital transformation can significantly promote the low-carbon development of manufacturing industry, which is still valid in the robustness test. 3) For sub-indicators, digital industrialization has the most obvious effect on the low-carbon development of manufacturing industry, and the improvement of digital development environment also has a positive impact on low-carbon development. 4) The heterogeneity analysis indicate that digital transformation has a greater impact on promoting low-carbon development of manufacturing in underdeveloped regions, and the positive effect is obvious in medium-low-energy-consuming industries, but not in high-energy-consuming industries. 5) The mechanism test shows that technological innovation is a channel for digital transformation to promote low-carbon development.Value: This paper provides empirical evidence for the environmental impact of digital transformation, and offers a scientific basis for relevant departments to formulate low-carbon development policies from the perspective of digital transformation.

The Development Status of the Manufacturing Industry and the Impact of Digital Characteristics from the Perspective of Innovation

“…Zhang et al [48] indicated the effect of digital technology development on reducing domestic embodied carbon intensity by analyzing the panel data of regions in China. Similarly, Lyu et al [49] pointed out that digital transformation had significant promotion on the development of low-carbon technology. Our paper aims to provide insights for formulating appropriate policies to accelerate the manufacturing digital transformation and regional economy development, which also contributes to sustainable development of manufacturing industry.…”

Does digital economy development reduce carbon emission intensity?

“…Secondly, the level of development of the digital economy in the previous period will affect the current period. Choosing the intersection of the lag phase of the digital economy and the first-order difference as the instrumental variable can meet the correlation assumption (Lyu et al, 2023). This paper uses the twostage least squares method of instrumental variables to estimate.…”

“…With the rapid development of the digital economy, the environmental effects of the digital economy have received extensive attention from the academic community. Some scholars believe that the information and communication technology industry and e-commerce industry in the digital economy, as environmentally friendly industries, can optimize the industrial structure by squeezing out industries with high energy consumption and high emissions, thus promoting economic and social low-carbon development Lyu et al, 2023). Other scholars believe that the wide application of digital technology increases electricity consumption and thus has a negative impact on the environment (Salahuddin and Alam, 2015;Lin and Huang, 2023).…”

Can the development of digital construction reduce enterprise carbon emission intensity? New evidence from Chinese construction enterprises

“…In the construction operation and management phase, companies generate fewer carbon emissions in future construction activities by applying industrial IoT to collect past data from the construction process and using digital twin architecture to monitor real-time architectural situations (Shen et al, 2022) to compose models and predict their future behavior (Metallidou et al, 2022). Finally, the application of digital construction technology can enhance the ability of information interaction and sharing within enterprises, such as the use of data creation and sharing, cross-temporal information dissemination and other channels to transmit, flow green emission reduction technology and other aspects of information (Lyu et al, 2023), for the purpose of reducing unnecessary activities, in addition, big data technology can offer data support for enterprise carbon emission reduction by improving the integration of data information such as energy input structure and CO 2 emissions (Zhang et al, 2021). Based on the above, a hypothetical H1 is proposed.…”