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This paper studies when and under what conditions the actions undertaken by the power plants involved in China's emission trading scheme (ETS) pilot became cost effective. Based on unique plant-level panel data and the difference-in-differences strategy, we identify that an insignificant initial reduction in cost efficiency occurred at the announcement stage for power plants in the pilot provinces; however, the cost efficiency of the pilot plants increased significantly following formal policy implementation. Additionally, the by-stage treatment effects differed across the pilot provinces due to localized market and non-market variations. Localized conditions of higher marketization, stricter policy enforcement, and lower carbon dependence enhanced this positive effect. The synthetic control results confirmed this variation in the policy effects. The carbon trading pilots resulted in improved efficiency in power plants in Shanghai, Guangdong, and Tianjin during the period 2013--2017, with an associated total cost saving of approximately 29.75 million RMB. To enhance the efficacy of the ETS policy, our findings suggest that the design of the policy should consider localized external factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of low-carbon development and drawing on the resource-based and dynamic capability theories, this paper provides a conceptual model of the relationship between external knowledge acquisition, green dynamic capability and corporate green innovation. Then, using 416 samples of firms in China collected from January 2018 to September 2018, the model was tested using the hierarchical regression analyses. The empirical results show that external technical knowledge acquisition and market knowledge acquisition have a positive influence on corporate green innovation. Additionally, the results show that green integration capability and green dynamic configuration capability positively moderate the relationship between technical knowledge acquisition and green innovation. The results also show that green learning capability, green integration capability and green dynamic configuration capability positively moderate the relationship between market knowledge acquisition and green innovation. This study supports the resource-based view, enriches the application of external knowledge acquisition in sustainable development, and extends the theory of green dynamic capability from causal prediction to situational factors. This paper provides theoretical support and practical guidance for firms seeking to effectively conduct open innovation, implement green innovation, and realize low-carbon development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green port construction has a profound impact on China's international climate commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050. To examine the carbon emission reduction potential of 20 major ports in the Yangtze River Delta port cluster of China, this study takes the perspective of environmental efficiency and employs dynamic exogenous variable DEA in efficiency evaluation. The results show the increasing environmental efficiency of the ports in the Yangtze River Delta, rising from 0.5116 in 2013 to 0.7276 in 2019. Also, there are significant spatial differences in efficiency. After considering exogenous variable, the average efficiency has increased from 0.5537 to 0.6276, indicating that regional green development is a critical factor in port environmental efficiency evaluation. Finally, the overall efficiency of input and output have risen, the slackness of carbon emission shows a trend of decreasing, and there is great potential for reducing carbon emissions from the perspective of port environmental efficiency. The previous studies paid less attention to dynamic efficiency, exogenous variables, and carbon emission. Therefore, this paper is the first comprehensive examination on the carbon emission reduction potential of China's Yangtze River Delta port cluster from the perspective of dynamic environmental efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consolidating the results of poverty alleviation and achieving carbon neutrality are serious challenges for global sustainable development, and it is essential to explore the relationship between these goals, and then offer scientific responses. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2010 to 2019, this paper conducted the 2SLS model by compromising the merits of the Regression Discontinuity principle with the STIRPAT model to study the interaction between poverty alleviation and carbon reduction. The study found that: (1) the implementation of poverty alleviation aggravates the problem of carbon emissions, and the main mechanism is that poverty alleviation promotes consumption and production by increasing the wealth of farmers, thereby increasing carbon emissions. (2) Carbon reduction weakens the achievement of poverty alleviation significantly, but the mitigation effect presents an "inverted U"-shaped curve, which first increases and then wanes. (3) Farmers' income and the development of rural transportation play a role in acting on the negative effects of carbon reduction. By integrating poverty theory and energy management, this article reveals the complex relationship between two important policies in China and offers relevant policy recommendations, which will not only promote the advancement of rural revitalization but also promote global sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal capitalism has extended the use of markets to address climate and energy issues. Carbon trading characteristically exemplifies the neoliberalization of climate policy. This paper discusses the workings of the European Union's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) in the European Union (EU) with a focus on its application in crisis-ridden Greece. Beyond environmental effectiveness and distributional effects, the paper explores the interactions of the EU ETS with crisis, austerity programs, energy poverty, and uneven development. Despite adjustments and changes, the EU ETS continues to indicate limited environmental effectiveness and unjust distributional effects. Moreover, by forging a centralized neoliberal transition to a low-carbon economy without consideration of the issues faced by unevenly developed and crisis-stricken EU members such as Greece, the EU ETS leads to additional disturbances and problems for the Greek economy as a whole, its pauperized working people, and its energy and climate options to reduce emissions on its own potential, needs, and priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon neutrality is an important policy in the current global response to climate change and has been widely recognized by various industries. In the process of promoting carbon neutrality, new energy plays a pivotal role. In this study, the definition and connotation of new energy and its role and specific operation in the energy transition of carbon neutrality are firstly explained. Promoting new energy development requires significant green and low-carbon investments. Taking China as an example, this paper analyzes the opportunities brought by the carbon neutral process to the field of green finance and analyzes the main features and development trends of green finance in China at present. Then this paper proposes policy recommendations to strengthen the development of green finance in China in terms of improving the green financial policy system, enhancing the supply capacity of green financial services, and optimizing the supporting environment for green financial development. Finally, this paper analyzes the measures and experiences of the United States in promoting low-carbon development and proposes countermeasures for China's low-carbon development on the basis of the five major relationships that need attention in China's carbon-neutral process. That is, strengthen the top-level design and improve the regulatory policy system; optimize the energy structure and increase the proportion of clean energy; optimize the industrial structure and reduce energy consumption in key industries; build a complete low-carbon technology system and promote low-carbon technology research and development and demonstration applications, and encourage local conditions to explore low-carbon development paths. The development of green finance can contribute to the advancement of new energy technologies, thus contributing to the achievement of carbon neutrality goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a sample of 1,867 firms that participate in the "Top-10,000 Energy- Consuming Enterprises Program" in China and aims to identify strategic traders in its pilot emissions trading scheme. Firms included in the ETS can exert their market power and manipulate allowance prices to achieve low compliance costs, which will consequently influence the effectiveness of this platform. This is of great importance to regulators or designers of this system in identifying these strategic traders and understanding their impact. We follow the basic principle proposed by Godal (2005) and develop a simple and implementable empirical procedure to study firm-level data from seven pilot programs in China. The results show that strategic traders exist with clear regional and sectoral differences. As a consequence of strategic trading by these firms, the overall volume of trading falls remarkably, with a clear increase in total compliance costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The involvement of private sector actors in low carbon urban transitions is a neglected element of geographical analysis. Drawing on Polanyian, cultural economic geographies and the non-capitalocentric ethics of JK Gibson-Graham’s diverse economies perspective, the paper engages with the wider literature on the engagement of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in environmental action, corporate social responsibility and low carbon transitions to develop a substantivist account of the contribution of SMEs to local low carbon transitions. The paper argues that, contra formalist economic analyses of economic rationality, SME owners should not be thought of as uncritical profit maximizers but as actors in favour of positive low carbon futures. Thus the paper argues that Polanyian economic geographies and diverse economies perspectives, which rarely speak to each other, can be drawn together, and concludes with suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of contradictions in urban low carbon transitions as engines of change. Following Kojève's reading of contradiction in Hegel's oeuvre, I argue that contradiction is a constitutive feature of low carbon interventions. This is an alternative to conventional readings of contradiction as a provisional encounter of opposites in which one will eventually cancel out the other. I unpack the concept of contra diction in three ways: first, by displaying a Hegelian-inspired understanding of contradiction in relation to change, time, and desire; second, by explaining how inherent contradictions can also be read in relation to the excesses that characterize the deployment of methods of calculation in low carbon interventions; and third, by situating these contradictions within the overall dynamics of carbon governance and purposive attempts to bring about a low carbon transition. The paper explores the practical implications of this analysis in a case of low carbon interventions in social housing in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The case study shows that, if contradictions are at the heart of low carbon interventions, contradiction analysis may provide a direction towards broader reconfigurations of social and technological practices and generate a desire to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polanyi's concept of the 'double movement' is frequently interpreted as the opposition between the problematic and unsustainable dynamics of the market and the benign and normatively desirable reaction against this by 'society'. This paper questions this dualistic interpretation of the double movement and undertakes a problematization of the Polanyian idea of social and environmental protection. It does this by revisiting the concept of the double movement in light of the recent proliferation of market-based mechanisms for environmental regulation. Through an exploration of the different interpretations of Polanyi's work, the paper presents a dialectical reading of the double movement that conceptualizes the idea of social protection within a broader capitalist framework. This is then illustrated with the case of emissions trading as a particular form of environmental protection. Carbon trading as a mitigation strategy, it is argued, corresponds to the Polanyian idea of 'social protection' in that its protective potential to reduce emissions is itself constrained by the socioeconomic framework within which it operates. This in turn points to the need for a critique of climate mitigation efforts that goes beyond a focus on current problems with emissions trading schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economics does not come in only one version. In order to understand the emergence of carbon markets, this paper turns to the offices of politics and administration and argues that carbon markets ought to be seen as an effect of different versions of economics. Hence, the paper suggests that, in analysing and exploring the emergence of carbon markets, it is not sufficient to focus on market devices. We must study a wider set of devices, such as modelling practices, planning documents, and paper trails. The basis for this analysis is a study of a particular office, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance. The paper traces how, within this office, the climate issue was transformed into an oil issue and how accounting and planning technologies took part in enacting the macroeconomy, rather than the environment, as an endangered object. Hence, when studying the performativity of economics, the macroeconomy must be included, the paper argues, and so must the study of the issue that is being enacted. In pursuing the analysis in this way, the paper seeks to demonstrate that the emergence of carbon markets pertained to not only an emergent climate issue but also to an emergent oil issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on multisited ethnographic case studies, this paper seeks to contrastively compare the demonstration and articulation formats of two social science expert cultures-- economics and anthropology--enrolled 'in the wild' of transnational environmental politics. How, the paper asks, do different social sciences come to be configured within, and do performative work upon, heterogeneous assemblages of global natures? In the first case US economists translate carbon markets into a world of Indian ecoprofessionals, across serious North-South conflicts in climate politics. In the second case a group of anthropologists, mobilized by Japanese bureaucratic elites, deploy their methods to assemble whaling cultures, as part of global biodiversity conflicts. Whereas the first case builds on existing arguments on the 'performativity of economics' (Callón), the second case expands this agenda, noting how the noneconomic social sciences (eg, anthropology) may also be consequential in enacting particular nature-cultures. Theoretically, the paper situates these inquiries at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS) and political anthropology, in addressing the question--important to environmental expertise and politics--of how 'local' (particular) and 'global' (universal) claims are linked in efficacious ways in 'other-than-Western' contexts? Here, the argument will be that, despite their differences, economic and anthropological performances of global natures share certain formal (aesthetic) similarities, related to credible expert demonstrations in transnational environmental contexts. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of this claim for STS self-reflection on its politics of methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Putting climate neutrality on the urban agenda inevitably requires a re-imagination and delineation of the boundaries of the city, both at the geographical level, with regard to its inscription in history and concerning the social groups it is composed of. Such an exercise of (re-)imagination or representation is a profoundly political act. It is on the level of this symbolic representation that the (de)politicised nature of sustainability projects must be assessed. Leuven Klimaatneutraal 2030 (LKN2030), a project which aims to make the city of Leuven (Belgium) carbon neutral by 2030, is a case in point. The way it delineates its spatial boundaries, inscribes itself in time and conceives of the main actors representing the city generates profound forms of depoliticisation. Our contention is that these can explain some of the obstacles the project currently faces, whereas it initially triggered a lot of enthusiasm. Though mechanisms of in- and exclusion and agenda-setting inevitably take place in every sustainability project, in LKN2030 these choices tend to be neutralised behind a technical, managerial and scientific discourse. As a result, the project risks to translate potentially interesting dynamics into a consensual project for urban renewal and city marketing, whereby sustainability goals are reframed into marketing objectives and economic opportunities. Drawing on post-foundational political theory, this paper assesses this evolution, but also explores the potential forms of repoliticisation that are emerging in its wake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intention of this paper is to (i) introduce a multi-regional dynamic emissions trading model and (ii) examine the potential impact of an emissions trading scheme (ETS) on the long-term evolution of energy technologies from national and regional perspectives in China. The establishment of this model is a salutary attempt to Sinicize the global integrated assessment model that combines economy, energy, and environment systems. The simulation results indicate that: (1) for majority of regions, ETS is more effective in cutting CO2 emissions than a harmonized carbon tax (HCT), but this might not be true for the entire country, which means that these two options have little difference in overall carbon reduction; (2) carbon tax policy is a more cost-effective option in curbing CO2 with respect to ETS in the long run; (3) neither ETS nor pure carbon tax provide enough incentives for the breakthrough of carbon-free energy technologies, which illustrates that matching with some other support policies, such as subsidies and R&D investment, is essential to extend the niche market; and (4) In the context of ETS, the diffusion of non-fossil technologies in regions that act as sellers performs much better than this diffusion in the buyer regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emissions trading scheme has recently become an important emissions reduction mechanism in China. The initial quota allocation is one of the key points in its design, which includes the initial quota allocation criterion and allocation method. In this paper, we analyze the regional macroeconomic impacts of emissions trading in China under different quota allocation criteria and allocation methods using a multiregional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The results show that the Ability-to-Pay criterion is better than the other criteria, as it can lead to fewer macroeconomic costs and welfare losses; narrow the economic gap between the eastern, central and western regions; and guide investment into the western regions. Comparing free allocation and auction, it is determined that free allocation leads to lower macroeconomic costs, while auction is better at adjusting the industrial structure. This indicates that a hybrid allocation method is preferable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of a carbon price on wholesale electricity prices and carbon-pass-through rates in the states comprising the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM). The methodology utilize an agent-based model, which contains many features salient to the NEM including intra-state and inter-state transmission branches, regional location of generators and load centres and accommodation of unit commitment features. The model uses a Direct Current Optimal Power Flow (DC OPF) algorithm to determine optimal dispatch of generation plant, power flows on transmission branches and wholesale prices. The results include sensitivity analysis of carbon prices on wholesale prices and carbon pass-through rates for different states within the NEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]