Emission Reduction Of The Heavily Polluting Industrial Enterprises

It has always been the focus of academic debate whether the emission reduction of enterprises depends on the coercion of executive command or the inducement of market mechanism.Based on the pollution database of China’s industrial enterprises from 1998 to 2012,this paper investigates the impact of TCZ and ETS policy on the emission reduction of high pollution industrial enterprises.The results show that:Firstly.TCZ policy did not reduce the emissions of SO2,and damaged the economy.This is because of the implementation deviation of environmental regulation policy and the serious information asymmetry between government and enterprises.However,environmental performance was included in the official assessment system in 2005,which made S02 emissions decrease 14.9%in TCZ.But in terms of economy,it has damaged the economic quality of enterprises.Due to the higher emission reduction targets in the TCZ in the 11th five-year plan,local officials have taken more practical actions under high pressure.As the result,14.9%emission reduction effect was produced.Although the total economic volume of enterprises in TCZ has not been significantly negatively affected,the economic quality of enterprises in TCZ has been greatly damaged due to the "product elimination effect" brought by environmental regulations.Secondly,the effect of ETS policy in 2007 is remarkable.The S02 emissions of enterprises in the pilot areas have been reduced by 11%,and it didn’t damage the economic benefits of enterprises.The robustness analysis shows that the emission reduction effect is not caused by government environmental regulation or comprehensive work of energy conservation and emission reduction in the same period.Dynamic analysis shows that with the continuous development of ETS,it will produce stronger emission reduction effect in the future.Heterogeneity analysis shows that:From the micro perspective,due to the differences in the cost of participating in ETS、the pertinence of environmental regulatory agencies and the differences in the functions、management mechanism、capital resources and technical level of enterprises,ETS has a stronger impact on non-state-owned large enterprises and long-term enterprises.From the meso perspective,the heavily polluting industrial enterprises have reduced more S02,and monopoly industry enterprises with high cost transfer ability can transfer emission reduction costs、information collection costs and transaction negotiation costs in emission trading market to consumers,thus producing strong emission reduction effect.From the macro perspective,the effect of enterprises in the areas with higher degree of marketization is more obvious.Finally,although ETS has not yet been able to make up for the economic losses caused by TCZ,the combined emission reduction effect of them is obvious.In terms of emission reduction methods,the average sulfur content of fuel coal of enterprises in the areas where the two types of policies overlap has been reduced by nearly 40%,which has effectively promoted the clean transformation of energy,but the enterprises have not improved their terminal treatment technology.The survival rate analysis shows that the flexible ETS improves the survival situation of enterprises in TCZ.In a word,the SO2 emissions reduction of the heavily polluting industrial enterprises not only needs the environmental regulation pressure generated by the government,but also needs to attract enterprises to participate actively through market inducement.