The Impact Of The Digital Economy On Provincial Carbon Peaking

Global warming is a huge challenge facing all mankind.The continuous increase of greenhouse gases dominated by carbon dioxide has led to frequent global glacier melting,sea level rise,drought and flood polarization,etc.,and promoting low-carbon development has become a consensus of all walks of life on serious global issues.In view of the responsibility for emission reduction in the context of global warming and the environmental effects in social and economic development,China has proposed to strive to achieve "carbon peak" in2030 and "carbon neutrality" in 2060,and carbon emission reduction has been raised to an unprecedented height in China.The rapid development of the digital economy has played a significant role in carbon emission reduction.On the one hand,as a new economic form,the digital economy continuously improves the digitalization and networking of the economy through digital industrialization,industrial digitalization and other modes,effectively promoting high-quality economic development and showing certain environmental improvement effects.On the other hand,the development of the digital economy itself has the characteristics of low energy consumption and low emissions,which can squeeze the development space of high-energy-consuming and high-emission enterprises through basic effects and promote low-carbon development.Therefore,studying the impact of China’s digital economy development level on carbon peaking has certain theoretical and practical significance.This thesis first sorts out the concepts of digital economy,carbon emissions and carbon peaking,and expounds the relevant theories and mechanisms of the impact of digital economy development level on carbon emissions.Then,using the data of 29 provinces,municipalities directly under the central government and autonomous regions in China from2011 to 2020,the entropy weight method is used to measure the development level of digital economy development of each province(municipality and district),and the carbon emission factor method is used to measure the carbon emissions of each province(municipality and district),and the development status of China’s digital economy and carbon emission is analyzed according to the calculation results.Secondly,the STIRPAT model is constructed to predict the carbon peak time under high digital economy scenarios,benchmark scenarios,and low digital economy scenarios.The mediating effect and regional heterogeneity of the impact of digital economy on carbon emissions are empirically analyzed.Finally,corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are put forward for the research conclusions of this thesis.The empirical results show that: first,there are outstanding spatial and temporal differences between the development level of digital economy and regional carbon emissions.Second,under different scenarios of digital economy development,the timing of carbon peaking is different;Third,there is an intermediary effect on carbon emission reduction caused by the development level of digital economy,which is mainly achieved through industrial structure;Fourth,there are obvious differences in the carbon emission reduction effect of the development level of digital economy in different regions.According to the research conclusions of this thesis,the following suggestions are put forward for the subsequent carbon emission reduction work: first,the digital economy is an important driving force for the country to achieve the dual carbon goal and comprehensively promote the lowcarbon development of society,and in the future carbon emission reduction work,it is necessary to strengthen the digital economy infrastructure,vigorously develop the digital economy,and form a nationwide awareness of carbon emission reduction;Second,change production methods,promote industrial structure optimization and upgrading,and reduce carbon emissions;Third,fully consider regional differences,and appropriately deepen the digital economy and low-carbon development process based on economic development and resource endowments.