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The aggravation of the global warming crisis, due to excessive consumption of traditional energy, urgently calls for the strategic goal of sustainable development. This study addresses endogeneity concerns by employing panel fixed effect and DID models, employing panel data from China's provincial green finance index spanning from 2016 to 2021. The empirical findings indicate that: (1) the impact of the new energy industry on environmental and economic benefits is more pronounced in inland areas characterized by lower GDP and smaller population size; (2) this effect is driven by green technological innovation, government incentive policies, and job creation. Drawing upon these results, this paper offers a range of pertinent recommendations at governmental, industrial, and societal levels to foster sustainable development, thereby enhancing social welfare. • We address endogeneity concerns by employing panel fixed effect and DID models. • New energy industry development contributes to environmental and economic benefits. • The impact of the new energy industry is more pronounced in inland areas. • The effect is driven by CO2 reductions, incentive policies, and job creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The use of natural gas in China is still relatively immature, as gas production only supplies a low percentage of the domestic energy system. In contrast, Chinese economy mainly relies on coal with a 67% share of the total primary energy supply. The environmental impact from this high coal dependence is significant and planners have sought for cleaner energy sources. Natural gas is both cleaner and generally more efficient than coal and gas consumption is rising quickly due to these facts. The growth tendency indicates that natural gas will become an important substitution for coal in some parts of the Chinese primary energy consumption. To quantify this tendency, this paper uses a system dynamics model to create a possible outlook. The results show that the gas consumption in China will continue to increase fast to 89.5 billion cubic meters in 2010; 198.2 billion cubic meters in 2020, before finally reach 340.7 billion cubic meters in 2030. Scenario analysis is used to assess the accuracy of the results. Finally, this paper gives policy suggestions on natural gas exploration and development, infrastructure constructions and technical innovations to promote a sustainable development of China’s natural gas industry. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The building industry in China is energy-intensive, and promoting energy efficiency improvements and energy savings in this sector is of vital significance for its sustainable development. Using a proposed meta-frontier DEA approach, this paper investigates the key factors responsible for changes in the economy-wide energy efficiency and the sources of both energy inefficiency and energy-savings potential in China’s regional building industry for the 2000–2014 period by considering three aspects: the technology gap, scale efficiency, and pure technical efficiency. The results show that (1) during the sample period, the energy efficiency in China’s building industry increased significantly. Technological progress and improvements in pure technical efficiency were the two main contributors. (2) Energy inefficiency in China’s building industry was measured at 0.5836, indicating that more than half of the current total energy consumption in this sector was wasteful. The regional technology gap and pure technical inefficiency were the two main sources of energy inefficiency. (3) Energy inefficiency and the energy-savings potential in China’s building industry showed distinct spatial characteristics, indicating that the focus of future work should vary by province. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]