Environmental Regulation, Technological Progress And Industrial Carbon Emission

Under the background of climate change,the strategic level of carbon emission governance has been constantly improved.Since the "double carbon" goal was proposed,the carbon emission issue is accelerating to become a realistic constraint on China’s economic and social development.To explore whether the macro "recessive" carbon emission reduction environmental regulation can penetrate into the industry through the discretion of the prefecture level municipal government,and the specific role played by technological progress.Based on the data of prefecture level cities from2003 to 2019,this paper constructs a set of indicators to depict environmental regulation,technological progress and industrial carbon emissions,and describes the typical characteristics of these variables.In addition,according to the characteristics of the role of environmental regulation on technological progress in China,a general equilibrium model of the cost of technological progress under environmental regulation is derived,which will reflect the government’s will.Moreover,as the impact of environmental regulation,the mandatory energy conservation goal constraint is used to analyze its impact on industrial carbon emissions.Furthermore,the hypothesis of the structural model is empirically tested by using a simple model.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)In terms of typical facts,China has taken energy as the starting point to achieve the governance of carbon dioxide emissions for a long time.Energy based environmental regulation was the most intensive during the11 th Five Year Plan period.The total factor energy efficiency has been cut off from a relatively smooth distribution to a low to medium level concentration,and then to a "low to medium level peak".The overall distribution has shifted to a high to medium level.The main peak of the distribution of industrial carbon emissions in prefecture level cities has gradually shifted to the right,indicating that the industrial carbon emissions of most prefecture level cities in China have generally increased during this period.(2)From the perspective of the impact of environmental regulation on industrial carbon emissions,environmental regulation has significantly reduced industrial carbon emissions.From a numerical point of view,environmental regulation has reduced industrial carbon emissions by about 6.37%.This conclusion is still valid under a series of robustness tests,including the elimination of provincial capital cities and municipalities directly under the Central Government,the elimination of interference from pollution constraint targets,the elimination of time trend interference from influencing factors,and the removal of extreme value interference.(3)From the role of technological progress in the impact of environmental regulation on industrial carbon emissions,some intermediary effects of technological progress are significant.The triple difference model is used to test the theoretical mechanism of technological progress.The regression results show that environmental regulation will,on average,cause a certain loss to economic output,and the "yield reduction effect" is greater for regions with high total factor energy efficiency.In addition,after absorbing the effect of total factor energy efficiency,environmental regulation still has a significant role in reducing carbon emissions,and compared with regions with low technology level,regions with high technology level have a greater role in reducing industrial carbon emissions.The main innovations of this paper are:(1)research perspective innovation.Since China has not released official carbon emission data,it still needs a period of preparation to carry out comprehensive carbon emission accounting and monitoring at the micro level in the future.Therefore,this paper focuses on discussing how to control carbon emissions through corresponding supporting measures on the basis of the existing more systematic and mature environmental regulation system,promote the improvement of quality and efficiency of existing energy-saving environmental regulation means,and help industry achieve green and low-carbon development of resource saving and environment-friendly.(2)Research content innovation.Based on the characteristics of the role of environmental regulation on technological progress in China,this paper deduces a general equilibrium model of the cost of technological progress under environmental regulation.Taking the impact of environmental regulation that can reflect the will of the government and has mandatory energy conservation goals as constraints,this paper analyzes its impact on carbon emissions,forms a logical loop of environmental regulation affecting carbon emissions on the transmission path,and based on the data at the industrial level of prefecture level cities,To verify the hypothesis of the structural model,and provide scientific and reasonable policy suggestions for promoting environmental regulation to improve quality and efficiency.