Study On The Mechanism Of Coordinated Benefit In Firm Pollution Reduction Under The Constraint Of Energy-saving Target

Scientific pollution abatement and sustainable development is an important task in China.The party’s "Nineteenth National Congress" report states that "The construction of ecological civilization is the millennium plan for Chinese nation,we must establish the concept that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets""Follow a developmental path characterized by higher productivity,general affluence and a sound ecosystem,build a beautiful China,Make new contributions to global environmental security." Report on the Work of the Government in 2019 states the "We will strengthen pollution prevention and control,enhance ecological improvement,and make big advances in green development." The report also points that "enterprises are the primary actors in pollution prevention and control.We need to reform and find new approaches to environmental governance.While we must conduct oversight over enterprises in compliance with laws and regulations,we must also heed their justified concerns and provide better assistance and guidance to them."In the process of pollution abatement and green development,enterprises are the final part in policy implementation which means that figure out firm’s reaction and behavior when facing relevant policy is the foundation of scientific policy-making.In practice,policies with different types and different subjects are mixed together which pay little attention to the synergistic effect they may bring about.As the world’s second largest economy and largest energy consumer,China’s rapid economic growth has been accompanied with some pollution problems.China became the world’s second largest carbon dioxide emitter in 2006.In 2018,China emitted 9.429 billion tons of carbon dioxide,accounting for 27.8%of the total global emission.In order to achieve the goal of energy conservation and emission reduction,change the mode of economic growth and achieve sustainable development,China implements "the Top-1000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises Program" during the 11th Five-Year Plan.The purpose of the policy is to improve firms’ energy efficiency,reduce energy consumption,promote technological progress in energy conservation,enhance firm energy management level,and make their energy consumption level reach the advanced level of their national or international counterparts.Therefore,the question is that,does energy conservation policy which target is reducing energy consumption have a synergistic effect on pollution reduction?What is the internal relationship between energy conservation and emission reduction and how the specific energy saving methods affect the relationship?The answers to the above questions could provide support for future regulation policies improvements and scientific pollution control.Based on "the Top-1000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises Program",this paper uses sulfur dioxide as an example to explore the synergistic effect of energy-saving policies on pollution emissions and its mechanism.The study found that energy-saving policies can produce significant emission reduction effect.After a series of robustness tests,the results are still valid.When examining the impact mechanism between energy-saving policies and emission reductions,it is found that the incentives for energy-saving policies to reduce corporate pollution emissions have direct evidence in terms of production reduction and energy efficiency improvement,but the change in energy structure has not played an effective role.Further studies found that there is a significant difference between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises in the way of achieving energy-saving goals.State-owned enterprises reduce production to achieve energy-saving goals,while private enterprises achieve it via improving energy efficiency.Therefore,private enterprises demonstrate better synergy effect in pollution reduction.Meanwhile,we also find that there are different pollution reduction effects between different areas and different sizes which is related to the way they choose to achieve the target.Finally,some suggestions are put forward:(1)Strengthen the coordination among different pollution reduction policies and maximize their synergistic effect.(2)In terms of pollution abatement,the synergistic effect should be taken into consideration when making policies,so as to gain more positive impacts and provide reference for future policy-making.(3)The policy design should take enterprises’sustainable development as the ultimate goal,and based on this purpose to formulate policy.In a nut shell,this article believes that when formulating energy-saving policies in the future,more considerations should be given to the possible synergistic emission reduction effect,instead of splitting them and simply pursuing energy consumption reduction,which would result in a win-win situation.Compared to the previous research,this paper may contribute to the following innovative points:on the one hand,this paper provides clear evidence of the synergetic effect between energy conservation and pollution emission reduction,and reveals how the synergetic effect is realized,and finds a win-win road to improve energy efficiency and reduce pollution emission through energy-saving policy.On the other hand,this paper directly verifies the emission reduction effect of "the Top-1000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises Program",which is a powerful supplement to the existing literatures that emphasize on how energy saving policies improve firms’ competitiveness.