Low-carbon city construction, spatial spillovers and greenhouse gas emission performance: Evidence from Chinese cities.

Low-carbon cities (LCC) are conducive to low-carbon development and reshaping the urban economic growth model. However, it is still unknown whether it has a synergistic mitigation effect on other greenhouse gases (GHGs). In this study, a dataset comprising 283 Chinese cities spanning the period 2003 to 2019 is chosen. We employ spatial difference-in-difference (SDID) modeling to investigate both the impacts and mechanisms of LCC on GHG emissions performance. The results show that (1) LCC notably lowers local GHG emissions, enhances emission efficiency, and improves GHG emissions performance in neighboring cities within a 1000 km radius. (2) LCC indirectly enhances the GHG emissions performance of local and neighboring cities through energy intensity and green technology innovation. Notably, LCC boosts the local GHG emissions performance by industrial structure upgrading and resource allocation but harms the positive spillover effects on nearby cities due to the siphoning effect. (3) The effect and spatial impact of LCC on GHG emission performance is notably pronounced in eastern cities, non-resource cities, and key environmental protection areas. The results of the study will further promote the development of LCC and provide an important decision-making reference for urban low-carbon sustainability.

The promotion mechanism of digital platformization of enterprises for "double carbon" goal: a Chinese case study.

At the 75th United Nations General Assembly, China formally proposed the goals of achieving carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, which is referred to as the "double carbon" strategic goal. And energy revolution is the key to achieve this goal. More and more energy enterprises seek to promote the "double carbon" goal through the digital platformization. However, the mechanism of digital platformization promoting the realization of "double carbon" goal is still unclear. Based on the perspective of platform ecosystem and organization structure, this paper deeply analyzes the key intermediary role of energy production mode change and energy trading mode change in energy transformation. This paper also studies the regulatory effect of policy environment, digital platform characteristics, platform leverage, value chain changes, and the ability of digital technology practice and innovatively puts forward the theoretical model. This model reveals the transmission path and internal mechanism of digital platformization of energy companies to promote the realization of dual-carbon goal. Through the established model, this paper analyzes a case that present the commercial digital platformization process developed by Chinese energy company. Such an innovative process in China context has been developed in order to contribute to achieve "double carbon" goals for the future.

Assessing the digital economy and its effect on carbon performance: the case of China.

With China's carbon neutrality target and the rapid growth of the digital economy, it is critical to understand how the digital economy can decouple economic growth from carbon emissions. This paper innovatively calculates the digital economy index in China from 2004 to 2019 and explores how the digital economy affects total factor carbon productivity (TFCP) and its spatial spillover effect. The empirical results indicate that (1) the development level of digital economy in eastern provinces is significantly higher than that in other provinces. (2) The digital economy positively promotes TFCP. Interestingly, digital industrialization has a more substantial effect on improving TFCP, while industry digitization has a weaker effect. (3) The digital economy not only helps improve the local TFCP but also has spatial spillovers to the surrounding areas and has the most prominent effect on the TFCP of the northern. (4) The digital economy affects TFCP through four channels industrial digital upgrading, human capital, market integration, and resource allocation. (5) The effects of the digital economy on TFCP exhibit significant heterogeneity in terms of time, region, and pollution degree. The findings of this study have important policy implications for promoting the transition to the digital economy and low-carbon development.

Toward carbon neutrality: a bibliometric analysis of technological innovation and global emission reductions.

In the context of global carbon neutrality, climate change mitigation and response has become a top priority. Currently, countries around the world are setting emission reduction targets or are already involved in carbon-neutral actions, with technological innovation becoming the key to global emission reduction. Therefore, a systematic review of the literature related to technology innovation and emission reduction in response to carbon-neutral actions for climate change is conducted. A global bibliometric visualization analysis is presented using CiteSpace and VOSviewer software. This study visualizes the basic relationship between global emission reduction and technology-related literature under the carbon neutrality target and analyzes and discusses the spatial distribution and hotspot trends of the co-author network and knowledge base. The results show that (1) the trend of the number of relevant studies can be divided into two phases before and after, and starts to increase gradually after 2020. (2) The structural relationship of the author- and institution-based cooperative networks is relatively loose, and the main cooperative networks, mainly by countries, are initially formed by the key contributions of developed and emerging economies. (3) Relevant research hotspots are reflected in multiple perspectives such as investment, management, and policy, in addition to emission reduction targets and technological innovation itself. The causal relationship between relevant research and economic and political dimensions has become an important driving factor for research development. Especially in the paradigm shift phase, there are research characteristics of human intervention and specific actions. (4) In terms of future trends, research involving policy management, methodological efficiency, and systemic models will become important research paths in the future by matching the supply of actions to real needs.

Coupling coordination and influencing factors of urban spatial accessibility and economic spatial pattern in the New Western Land-Sea Corridor.

The construction of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor is crucial to the economic development of western China and even Southeast Asia. Research analyzes the evolution of urban economic spatial pattern of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor in different years and discusses the coordinated development between economic connection and accessibility and its influencing factors. The research results show that: First, the influence of labor force on the urban centrality of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor is gradually increasing, and the spatial pattern of the urban network has gradually shifted from a unipolar attraction type to a spatial pattern of "one main and multiple subordinates." Second, urban accessibility presents a "core-periphery" spatial pattern, and the coupling coordination degree presents the spatial characteristics of "centro-periphery." The economic correlation strength, spatial accessibility, and the coordinated distribution of the two all have obvious spatial agglomeration characteristics. Third, there are spatial differences in the influencing factors of the coupling coordination degree. Based on this, the research puts forward the development mode of "growth pole," "area," and "axis," attaches importance to the problems of labor force in urban development, and strengthens the level of coupling coordination between regional transportation and economy, to promote the integration of regional transportation, logistics, and economy.

Multiple effects of ICT investment on carbon emissions: evidence from China.

Little research has been conducted on the multiple possible future environmental effects of different types of information and communication technology (ICT) investment. This paper innovatively calculates the ICT productive capital stock (PCS) in China from 2007 to 2018 and explores the multiple effects of ICT PCS on carbon emissions. The results show that (1) ICT PCS is conducive to carbon emission reduction; furthermore, ICT software PCS has a significant carbon emission reduction effect, while ICT hardware PCS has the opposite outcome. (2) The spatial effect demonstrates that ICT and its hardware and software PCS can significantly reduce carbon emissions in surrounding areas. (3) The ICT PCS indirectly affects carbon emissions through the digital economy and energy efficiency, but the role of the influence mechanism varies according to the type of ICT PCS. (4) There is a nonlinear relationship between all ICT PCS and carbon emissions due to differences in green productivity and ICT PCS levels. Finally, this study provides valuable references for optimizing ICT investment and promoting low-carbon development.

Knowledge domain and emerging trends of carbon footprint in the field of climate change and energy use: a bibliometric analysis.

Carbon footprint (CF) research has attained tremendous popularity for improving the climate environment purposes. In particular, current energy use has been identified as the main cause of climate change. CF plays an irreplaceable role in managing energy use, reducing gas emissions, and improving climate change. The objective of this study was to review studies that have developed CF and to perform a bibliometric analysis using two key terms: "climate change" and "energy use". From bibliometric analysis using CiteSpace and VOSviewer, it was possible to establish a knowledge map of cooperative network structure and research evolution. We are aiming to reveal the main logical chain of CF research leading to climate change, to make up for the lack of current literature, and provide research inspiration for researchers. The research findings mainly focus on four aspects. First, the relevant research began in 2008 and is in a state of continuous rise. Second, due to the law of research development and the prominence of practical problems, related research has experienced a stage from conceptual methods to specific problems. Third, China and the USA assume an important role in which international cooperation is the overall trend. Fourth, related research can be divided into CF algorithm research, ecological environment management research, and specific cross-industry fields. In addition, possible opportunities for change in related research are explored. It is also suggested that the integration of CF with other footprints, when energy use and environmental change are fully considered, may become an important future research trend by providing a more comprehensive environmental impact.

Urban and industrial environmental pollution control in China: An analysis of capital input, efficiency and influencing factors.

With rapid urbanization and industrialization, environmental pollution caused by such activities has drawn much attention due to its adverse impacts on environmental quality and public health. Therefore, under the current background of China's ecological civilization construction, promoting the precise and scientific treatment of environmental pollution holds great significance. This paper proposes an improved perpetual inventory method to systematically measure the capital stock of urban and industrial pollution control. The efficiency of urban and industrial pollution control is measured by adopting the global data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. Then, the influencing factors of pollution control efficiency are empirically analyzed by using the spatial Tobit regression model. The results reveal that, first, the growth rate of the capital input scale of urban pollution control is greater than that of industrial pollution control, and the spatial distribution of capital input is unbalanced. Second, the efficiency of urban and industrial pollution control from 1991 to 2019 was generally low. The current efficiency values of urban and industrial pollution control are less than 0.2 and 0.5, respectively, indicating that urban and industrial pollution control are far from efficient. Third, the efficiency of urban and industrial pollution control is significantly positively related to the level of urbanization and industrialization, has a U-shaped relationship with the economic development level, and has heterogeneous effects on technology, energy intensity, government influence and foreign trade. On this basis, we provide constructive suggestions for optimizing the performance of pollution control.

How do heterogeneous R&D investments affect China's green productivity: Revisiting the Porter hypothesis.

Currently, China's environmental pollution control investment and R&D investment have increased at a remarkable speed, exceeding the GDP growth rate. Against this background, determining the impact of different orientations of R&D investment on green total-factor productivity (GTFP) is essential for overcoming the dual dilemma of resource depletion and environmental degradation. By applying the perpetual inventory method (PIM), meta-frontier DEA method and mediation effect test methods, this paper empirically tests the effects and mechanisms of environmentally induced R&D (ER&D) and traditional R&D (TR&D) on promoting GTFP during 2004-2019 in China at the provincial level. The results show that (1) ER&D investment has significantly promoted the growth of GTFP, while TR&D's promoting effects on GTFP are not significant; (2) ER&D promotes the growth of GTFP through the three channels of emission reduction, clean energy consumption, and green technology progress; and (3) from the perspective of regional heterogeneity, ER&D's promoting effects on GTFP in the eastern provinces are higher than the central and western provinces, and the promoting effects in the northern provinces are higher than in the southern provinces. From the perspective of pollution degree heterogeneity, ER&D's promotion of GTFP shows an inverted U-shaped characteristic as the pollution level increases. This means that, in the process of China's environmental governance, it is necessary to increase ER&D investment and guide green innovation to serve pollution control to achieve sustainable and high-quality economic development.