Can new energy demonstration city policy reduce carbon emissions? A quasi-natural experiment from China

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international 2023-04, Vol.30 (18), p.51861-51874
• Main Authors: Liu, Lu, Meng, Yuxin, Razzaq, Asif, Yang, Xiaodong, Ge, Wenfeng, Xu, Yang, Ran, Qiying
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Carbon; Carbon Compounds, Inorganic - adverse effects; Carbon Compounds, Inorganic - analysis; Carbon Dioxide; Carbon neutrality; China; Cities; City Planning; Conservation of Natural Resources; Development policy; Earth and Environmental Science; Economic Development; Ecotoxicology; Emission analysis; Emissions; Emissions control; energy; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Health; Environmental Monitoring - methods; Environmental Policy; Environmental science; Green buildings; Green development; Heterogeneity; Public Policy; Research Article; Resource efficiency; Resource utilization; Statistical sampling; Statistics; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control
• ISSN: 1614-7499; 0944-1344; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-023-25971-0

Against achieving carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 context in China, the new energy demonstration city policy (NEDCP) has a crucial function to perform in promoting resource utilization efficiency, building the green development policy system, and facilitating carbon emission reduction. However, existing research has rarely investigated the contribution of NEDCP on carbon reduction. To investigate the policy effect of NEDCP, the differences-in-differences (DID) model is introduced to quantify the influence of NEDCP on carbon reduction, taking a statistical sample of 285 Chinese cities over the period 2005–2017 on the basis of exploring the intrinsic mechanism of NEDCP on carbon emissions. The statistical results reveal that NEDCP significantly inhibits carbon emissions. NEDCP’s dampening impact on carbon reduction is more pronounced in the eastern area but not in other areas. City size and resource endowment heterogeneity results suggest that NEDCP significantly inhibits the output of carbon emissions in non-resource-based and large cities but insignificantly in resource-based and small- and medium-sized cities. Finally, we conclude that policy-makers should not only broaden the scope of NEDCP implementation continuously but also design relevant policy combination tools following the basic characteristics of each city to provide institutional guarantees for achieving carbon emission reduction.