| Industrialization and mechanization promote the rapid development of modern society,but also bring a lot of environmental problems.Since the first World Climate Conference in 1979,global warming has become a hot issue.Over the past hundred years,due to the excessive use of fossil energy such as coal and oil,a large amount of carbon dioxide has been produced,leading to the rising temperature of the earth,namely the greenhouse effect.The greenhouse effect will cause natural disasters and ecological problems,endangering the sustainable development of human society.In order to deal with this global climate problem,various countries have formulated energy conservation and emission reduction policies to reduce carbon emissions in the process of economic development so as to alleviate the greenhouse effect.In 2020,China first proposed the strategic goal of "carbon peak and carbon neutral",which was formally written into the government work report in 2021,indicating the country’s determination to save energy and reduce emissions.Since carbon emissions mainly come from the use of fossil energy,and China’s current economic development is still heavily dependent on fossil energy,the key to energy conservation and emission reduction is to reduce the energy consumption required by unit economic output,that is,to improve energy efficiency.At present,scholars have conducted in-depth research on the influencing factors of energy efficiency,and discussed the means to improve energy efficiency from the aspects of environmental regulation,technological innovation,industrial structure,energy structure and so on.However,few scholars have explored the relationship between green finance and energy efficiency.Green finance is an emerging environmental protection policy in recent years,which is characterized by guiding enterprises to carry out green transformation through investment and financing activities in the financial market.When conducting green finance business,financial institutions will evaluate the environmental performance of enterprises,impose financing constraints on polluting enterprises,and force them to improve energy efficiency and achieve energy conservation and emission reduction.In view of this,this paper uses provincial-level panel data in China to study the impact of green finance on regional energy efficiency,and tries to demonstrate that green finance can promote energy conservation and emission reduction by improving energy efficiency,thus providing theoretical support for the development of green finance under the background of carbon peak and carbon neutrality.Based on the Guidelines on Building a Green Financial System issued by seven ministries and commissions,this paper constructs a green financial development index.This paper takes the constructed green finance development index as the independent variable and the regional energy efficiency index as the dependent variable,selects the sample data of 30 provinces,autonomous regions and municipalities in China(except Tibet)from 2015 to 2019 to conduct panel regression.The empirical results show that,on the whole,green finance development can significantly promote the improvement of regional energy efficiency.For the eastern region,green finance development is positively correlated with regional energy efficiency.For the central and western region,the relationship between green finance development and energy efficiency is not significant.In addition,From the industrial level,green finance development can promote the improvement of regional energy efficiency by promoting the rationalization and upgrading of industrial structure.From the perspective of energy,green finance can improve regional energy efficiency by optimizing regional energy structure.At the same time,by supporting the development of new energy sources,green finance can drive up regional energy prices,thus providing incentives for companies to improve energy efficiency.According to the empirical results,this paper puts forward the corresponding policy recommendations,our country should actively develop green finance,improve the green financial market,rich green financial instruments,unified green financial standard system,cultivating green financial talent,and setting up the green financial development pilot,driving the development of backward area green finance,so as to promote the overall energy efficiency of ascension,boosting our country as soon as possible Carbon peak,carbon neutral development goal. |
PDF Full Text Request