School of Economics and Management, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510006, China.
Department of Economics, Jinan University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510632, China; Institute of Resource, Environment and Sustainable Development Research, Jinan University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510632, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Nov 10;846:157509. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157509. Epub 2022 Jul 20.
The improvement of carbon emission efficiency is crucial to the realization of the global carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. Based on the panel data of 282 cities from 2004 to 2018 in China, this paper employs the stochastic frontier analysis approach combined with the Sheppard distance function to calculate the total factor carbon emission efficiency of each city. Regarding the low-carbon pilot city policy as a quasi-natural experiment, we evaluate the impact of the pilot policy on carbon emission efficiency and its spatial spillover effect using the spatial difference-in-differences model. The results show that the pilot policy can significantly improve the carbon emission efficiency and has long-term dynamic effects. Also, the effect of the policy has spatial spillover, and has a positive impact on the neighboring cities. Mechanism analysis implies that optimal allocation of resources, energy conservation and green technology innovation make the low-carbon policy play an important intermediary role in promoting carbon emission efficiency. Besides, the effects of the pilot policy have obvious heterogeneity, especially cities in large, higher population densities and the north. These findings reveal that low-carbon pilot city policies are indispensable for both implementing the dual-carbon strategy and winning the defense for the blue sky.
提高碳排放效率对于实现全球碳峰值和碳中和目标至关重要。本文基于 2004 年至 2018 年中国 282 个城市的面板数据，采用随机前沿分析方法结合 Shepard 距离函数，计算了每个城市的全要素碳排放效率。以低碳试点城市政策为准自然实验，利用空间双重差分模型评估了试点政策对碳排放效率及其空间溢出效应的影响。结果表明，试点政策能显著提高碳排放效率，且具有长期动态效应。此外，政策效应具有空间溢出性，对周边城市具有正向影响。机制分析表明，资源的优化配置、节能和绿色技术创新使低碳政策在促进碳排放效率方面发挥了重要的中介作用。此外，试点政策的效果具有明显的异质性，特别是大城市、人口密度较高和北方城市。这些发现表明，低碳试点城市政策对于实施双碳战略和赢得蓝天保卫战都是不可或缺的。
