Road congestion and air pollution -Analysis of spatial and temporal congestion effects.

Urban traffic congestion has resulted in several adverse outcomes, including reduced traffic efficiency, increased noise pollution, and heightened exhaust emissions. It has also emerged as a significant indicator of urban health concerns. This article primarily delves into an examination of the pollution stemming from congestion. To accomplish this, the study focuses on two specific aspects of congestion measurement: long-term spatial constraints (limited travel routes) and short-term time delays (time wasted due to congestion). Expanding on this, the article explores the potential solutions to mitigate pollution effects through measures such as optimizing space utilization through public transportation systems like subways and strategically scheduling travel during holidays. These considerations are incorporated within the article's scope. Additionally, in order to address endogeneity concerns, the research conducts instrumental variable effectiveness tests from both temporal and spatial perspectives. The outcomes highlight the degradation of air quality and the increase in total traffic congestion in both the long and short term, while also indicating the presence of genuine methods to alleviate these issues. Consequently, effective collaborative efforts for prevention and control are imperative to combat environmental and traffic pollution. Moreover, optimizing sustainable urban development plans to enhance land utilization plays a pivotal role in minimizing the external costs associated with long-distance commuting.

Revealing the hidden carbon flows in global industrial Sectors-Based on the perspective of linkage network structure.

This paper interprets the implicit carbon flows in global industrial sectors from a network perspective. Using the SNA-IO integrated model, along with cross-border input-output data from Eora26 (2000-2020) and global energy balance data, the implicit carbon emissions of global industrial sectors and their evolution are analyzed. A carbon emission network structure from an industrial chain perspective is proposed. The results indicate that the carbon emissions responsibility of an industry is not only associated with its own energy consumption. It also involves the carbon emissions transfer resulting from the exchange of products and services between upstream and downstream industries. Block model analysis reveals the carbon emission transfer relationships and their interconnections among global industrial sectors, tending towards an industry clustering pattern where "production side" converges with "demand side" coexisting in supply and demand. There are noticeable inequalities in wealth gains and environmental burdens between these blocks. This paper can provide targeted carbon reduction policy recommendations for various industrial sectors to participate in global responsibility allocation and promote the formation of a low-carbon global industrial sector network.

The alternative path for fossil oil: Electric vehicles or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles?

New energy vehicles are accelerating to substitute for internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) and fossil oil. Although most literature acknowledges this trend, few compare two specific substitutable paths in terms of the operation system, namely electric vehicles (EVs) and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs). This paper makes a comparative analysis of EVs and HFCVs in power sources, fuel storage and transportation, fuel supply infrastructure construction, and the cost and use of vehicles. Our findings indicate that electric passenger vehicles have more advantages in economy, safety, and environmental impact, in comparison with hydrogen fuel cell passenger vehicles. Nevertheless, great efforts should still be made to develop advanced rapid charging technology, shorten charging time, and accelerate charging infrastructure construction. Then, it is just around the corner for EVs to gradually take over from traditional motor vehicles driven by oil. In contrast, popularizing hydrogen fuel cell passenger vehicles faces several insurmountable obstacles in the short run, such as the high hydrogen production price, complicated storage process, and expensive hydrogen refueling station infrastructure. However, hydrogen fuel cell commercial vehicles have unique application scenarios. The dislocation and complementarity principle in different scenarios of EVs and HFCVs is supposed to be firmly grasped.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of CO2 emissions: a case study of the "New Yangtze River Delta" in China.

Due to vast territory and disparate regional energy varieties and efficiency in China, the spatial and temporal distribution of CO2 emissions in regions is quite different. But the formulation of previous carbon reduction policies was mainly based on national or provincial emissions data, lacking of refined scale data. This paper first collected Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) night light datasets from 1992 to 2013 and constructed a CO2 emissions inversion estimation model. Then, the spatiotemporal dynamics were analyzed by global and local spatial autocorrelation methods. Findings are as follows: (1) Total CO2 emissions in the Yangtze River Delta showed an overall growth trend from 396 million tons in 1992 to 1.825 billion tons in 2013, with an average annual growth rate of 17.18%. (2) The relatively slow growth accounted for the highest proportion in five growth types of CO2 emissions and were mainly concentrated in the underdeveloped southwestern regions of the Yangtze River Delta. The rapid-growth were agglomerated in the eastern coast areas. (3) Hot spots and sub-hot spots were concentrated in Shanghai, Suzhou, and Ningbo. Cold spots and sub-cold spots included southwest part of Anhui and Zhejiang. The findings provided a decision-making basis for mitigating CO2 emissions more reasonably.

How the new energy industry contributes to carbon reduction? -Evidence from China.

New energy is an inevitable choice to cope with global climate change. China has invested heavily in new energy, but it still faces enormous pressure to reduce emissions. The effectiveness and path of new energy industry development still need to be solved. This paper studies the relationship between the development of new energy industry and carbon emissions. A theoretical model of new energy firms' production behaviour was constructed, reflecting that the internal carbon emissions of the new energy industry mainly depend on its cost structure and R&D intensity. Specifically, part of the carbon emission caused by scale effect comes from direct capacity construction, and the other part comes from the production-cost effect of R&D. Based on the provincial panel data in China from 2005 to 2019, empirical tests are carried out from two aspects of scale effect and technology effect. Results show that the scale expansion has an inverted U-shaped relationship with carbon emissions, which is supported by the regression with GDP as the threshold variable. The effect of new energy technologies in reducing emissions is continuous. The threshold for technology to play a role in reducing emissions is smaller than the threshold for scale. The findings explain the expansion of the new energy industry in the early stages may lead to an increase in carbon emissions. Our study provides important insights that the scale and technology are two dimensions that cannot be ignored in the process of energy transformation. It is necessary to act in the reasonable range and pay attention to the accumulation of technology innovation and the orderly expansion of production capacity.

Impacts of aquaculture on the area and soil carbon stocks of mangrove: A machine learning study in China.

Mangrove is an important carbon sink, as it can achieve climate regulation by sequestering carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, 50 % of mangrove species are threatened with extinction in China, and the carbon stocks in vegetation has also dropped by 53.1 %. Here, we couple remote sensing data with Random Forests, Support Vector Machines, and XGBoost to analyse mangroves in mainland China from 1986 to 2019. We find that aquaculture has crucial impacts on mangroves and prediction error. Future predictions indicate that the changes of mangroves in different cities range from -5.09E+06 m2 to 2.30E+06 m2, and soil carbon(C) stocks is "-1.90E+05 Mg ~ 8.57E+04 Mg". To protect mangroves, exploring the balance between aquaculture and mangroves and paying attention to the sustainable transformation of aquaculture are urgently required. In this way, mangroves can fully play the role of carbon sequestration and contribute to China's dual carbon goals.

Outward foreign direct investment and energy intensity: evidence from the listed companies in China.

Since 2005, China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) has increased year by year, which corresponds to the continuous decline of energy intensity. But there is limited literature concerning their relationship nowadays. To answer whether or not OFDI can reduce energy intensity, this paper selects data from 29 provinces in China from 2006 to 2015 and establishes a fixed-effects model to analyze the relationship. Further, this paper divides OFDI into technology-intensive ones and non-technology-intensive ones in order to distinguish the impact of outward foreign direct investment from different types of enterprises on the energy intensity. Combined with the micro-data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, we find that OFDI plays a significant role in reducing the energy intensity in China, and OFDI of high-technology-intensive enterprises has a greater effect on the decrease of energy intensity than that of low-technology-intensive enterprises. This paper classifies OFDI from the perspective of enterprise technology intensity, which enriches the existing research results in the field of international cooperation and energy intensity. It also overcomes the limitations of previous literature data and provides new evidence for encouraging high-tech enterprises to strengthen international cooperation from a micro level.

Does government information transparency contribute to pollution abatement? Evidence from 264 Chinese cities.

Government information transparency is taken as a prominent instrument of environmental regulation in Chinese cities, especially in the current digital age. However, polluters' strategic emission and production behaviors across cities, confronted with changing information disclosure level, might make the policy's effect unexpected in practice. While many existing studies have explored the impact of institutions on pollution, government information disclosure only attracted little attention from empirical studies. Using the method framework of the spatial Durbin model, this study empirically investigates the impact of government information transparency on sulfur dioxide emissions with samples of 264 Chinese cities from 2005 to 2012. We find that a city's government information transparency negatively relates to its local emission level of sulfur dioxide. Moreover, a city's sulfur dioxide emissions positively relate to its neighboring cities' government information transparency levels. The further calculations of marginal effects show that the average of such a direct and local impact of government information transparency outweighs the average indirect effect a city receives from its neighboring cities, making government information transparency benefits to pollution abatement in total.

Comparison of improving energy use and mitigating pollutant emissions from industrial and non-industrial activities: Evidence from a variable-specific productivity analysis framework.

This paper seeks to account for differences in productivity of the industrial and non-industrial activities in the productivity analysis framework. The Luenberger productivity indicator is widely applied to analyze the productivity change, and can be decomposed as it follows the additive structure. But there have been few studies on sector operation performance and industrial structure involving both the industrial and non-industrial inputs, output and air pollutant emissions. Resorting on the China's province-level data on energy, output and air pollutants from 2006 to 2019, we find that the industrial SO2 emissions, energy consumption and NOX emissions are the major factors leading to sector operation inefficiency. By decomposing the operation performance indicator (OPI), we observe that contribution to productivity change by energy consumption, air pollutant emissions and output is higher than contribution by the non-industrial variables. Furthermore, technical progress offsets negative efficiency growth. In order to implement energy conservation, emissions reduction and industrial restructuring at the provincial level, China's government should take efforts to improve the efficiency of non-industrial energy consumption and support the development of cleaner industries.

Assessing the total factor performance of wastewater treatment in China: A city-level analysis.

China is currently facing huge challenges in mitigating water shortages and protecting water bodies. The inferior wastewater treatment of the country has become the main barrier impeding regional water pollution control and sustainable economic development. Therefore, creating an overview of the current performance and weaknesses of city-level wastewater treatment is crucial and beneficial for exploring the driving factors for improvement. This study employed the slack-based measure and improved Luenberger productivity indicator decomposition method to investigate wastewater treatment performance in Chinese cities from static and dynamic perspectives. Results showed that pollutants were the main factors leading to wastewater treatment inefficiency. The total factor productivity of wastewater treatment (WTFP) of Chinese cities demonstrated an increasing trend from a temporal perspective and distinct spatial heterogeneity. An in-depth decomposition revealed that the most influential factor leading to WTFP growth was efficiency improvement rather than technical progress, pollutants discharge reduction rather than intensification of inputs. Given the varied types of cities, corresponding optimal and differentiated strategies, including source-oriented controls and end-of-pipe-led regulations, were provided to improve the overall performance of wastewater treatment. The findings of this study can help decision makers design specific policies for wastewater governance, which would be beneficial for achieving the green and high-quality development targets.

Energy infrastructure investment and regional inequality: Evidence from China's power grid.

Effective energy infrastructure investment strategy could optimize the reallocation of energy resources, promote the coordinated development across regions, and narrow the regional development inequality. This paper, from the perspective of inclusive growth, investigates how the energy infrastructure investment could affect the regional economic growth, based on the evidence of China's power grid during 2000-2014. The "Effective Cost Index" (ECI) is formulated to measure the development degree of power grid infrastructure (PGI) at first. After that, the economic growth convergence model is adopted to analyze the impact of PGI on regional economic convergence by the method of system GMM. Moreover, different PGI investment scenarios are simulated to discuss what the optimal investment distribution is. The results present that the ECI can impact the regional economic growth negatively, and the PGI investment may generate higher marginal benefits for the less developed inland areas than the developed coastal areas. In China, the most effective way to narrow regional inequality is to distribute the PGI investment to the central hub provinces.