Study On The Impact Of Low-carbon City Pilot Policies On Energy Productivity

The low-carbon city pilot policy is one of the policy tools of environmental regulation in China,and it has been widely discussed in the academic circles since the first pilot areas were released in July 2010.The pilot policy of low-carbon cities emphasizes optimizing energy structure,improving energy efficiency and highlighting green development,which will have an important impact on energy productivity.Energy productivity is an intuitive and simple indicator that reflects energy efficiency,and also a good indicator of urban energy conservation and emission reduction.However,due to the lack of data on energy consumption at the city level,many scholars have some limitations in the data discussed in this block.This paper is to find the statistical yearbook of provinces and cities,statistical bulletins,etc.to fill this gap,with a relatively accurate urban energy data to assess the effectiveness of low-carbon urban pilot policy.Therefore,using panel data from 2005-2018,panel data from 271 municipalities are used to assess the impact of low-carbon urban pilot policies on energy productivity using a gradual double differential approach,and the possible channels for the impact of pilot policies on energy productivity are explored using the intermediary effect model.The study found that the policy effect of the low-carbon city pilot policy has significantly promoted the improvement of energy productivity after a series of robust tests.And the policy effect of three batches of pilot policies is heterogeneous,and the influence coefficients of three batches of policies show the "U" characteristics of first fall and then rise.According to the analysis of heterogeneity of cities,the pilot policy has a significant impact on energy productivity in key cities,cities in the eastern and western regions,and cities in non-old industrial bases,but no significant impact on cities in general,central regions and cities with old industrial bases.Further analysis of the channels of role,it is believed that the lowcarbon city pilot policy mainly adjusted the industrial structure to improve energy productivity,while the pilot policy will affect the factor substitution of capital energy and population density,resulting in the loss of energy productivity.This paper evaluates the low-carbon urban pilot policy from a new perspective---energy productivity,which enriches the theoretical achievements of the policy in a certain sense,and the typical heterogeneous characteristics and function channels of the city obtained in this paper also provide a good reference for the promotion of the pilot policy.