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In recent years, the Chinese Central Government has put great emphasis on the marine economy, since it has been a new driving force of the national economic development. Yet, the relationship between marine economic development and energy efficiency remains unknown. In this paper, we investigate whether marine economic development affected energy efficiency. We focused on the Zhoushan Archipelago, the first National New Area for marine economic development in China. We applied panel data approach to construct the counterfactual of Zhoushan Archipelago. We compared Zhoushan and its counterfactual, the synthetic Zhoushan, and viewed the difference between them, after the Zhoushan Archipelago New Area, as the impact of marine economic development on energy efficiency. We found that compared with its counterfactual, the real Zhoushan had a more substantial improvement in energy efficiency after the National New Area construction. We estimated that the construction of the National New Area for Marine Economy increased energy efficiency by about 10 percentage points. We also applied the bootstrapping technique to illustrate the significance of the estimated results. The results suggest that the Zhoushan Archipelago New Area construction had a statistically significant impact on energy efficiency. In addition, we conducted two tests, including leave-one-out tests and permutation tests, to check the robustness of estimated results, which also serve as an illustration of significance of the estimated results from an alternative empirical perspective. The results from these two tests are similar to each other, both indicating that the Zhoushan Archipelago New Area construction had a statistically significant positive impact on energy efficiency. Overall, our results suggest that marine economic development had a sizable improvement in energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: For the first time, this paper investigates the relationship between crowdfunding and renewable energy generation for a panel of 32 countries from 2013 to 2018. Applying the instrumental variable generalised method of moment, this study indicated that crowdfunding has a significant positive effect on renewable energy generation. Notably, 1% increase in crowdfunding raises renewable energy generation by 0.35%. Specifically, we also found that crowdfunding spurs the generation of solar energy (0.45%), wind energy (0.37%), and other renewable energy (0.30%) while having a neutral effect on hydroelectricity generation. The findings from the causality analysis showed that there is bi‐directional causality between crowdfunding and renewable energy generation. Country‐specific analysis indicated that China has the highest effect of crowdfunding on renewable energy generation, while the United Arab Emirates has the lowest effect. These findings suggest that policymakers need to advance crowdfunding development by promoting favourable regulations, social capital (trust), and internet infrastructure investment. Policies that advance renewable energy generation, such as subsidies, feed‐in‐tariffs, and technology procurement, are also recommended. Highlights: Examines the effect of crowdfunding on renewable energy generation.Use a panel of 32 countries from 2013 to 2018.Crowdfunding drives renewable energy generation.There exists bi‐directional causality between crowdfunding and renewable energy generation.China has the highest effect of crowdfunding on renewable energy generation. NOVELTY STATEMENT: This study has, for the first time, measured the contributions of crowdfunding to renewable energy generation. The study has also demonstrated that there exists bi‐directional causality between crowdfunding and renewable energy generation. Finally, this study has shown that China has the highest effect of crowdfunding on renewable energy generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: China's high‐speed economic growth and ambitious urbanization depend heavily on the massive consumption of fossil fuel. However, the over‐dependence on the depleting fossil fuels causes severe environmental problems, making China the largest energy consumer and the biggest CO2 emitter in the world. Faced with significant challenges in terms of managing its environment and moving forward with the concept of sustainable economic development, the Chinese government plans to move away from fossil fuels and rely on renewables such as hydropower, wind power, solar power, biomass power and nuclear power. In this paper, the current status of China's renewable energy deployment and the ongoing development projects are summarized and discussed. Most recent developments of major renewable energy sources are clearly reviewed. Additionally, the renewable energy development policies including laws and regulations, economic encouragement, technical research and development are also summarized. This study showcases China's achievements in exploiting its abundant domestic renewable energy sources to meet the future energy demand and reducing carbon emissions. To move toward a low carbon society, technological progress and policy improvements are needed for improving grid access (wind), securing nuclear fuel supplies and managing safety protocols (nuclear), integrating supply chains to achieve indigenous manufacture of technologies across supply chains (solar). Beyond that, a preliminary prediction of the development of China's future renewable energy developments, and proposes targeted countermeasures and suggestions are proposed. The proposal involves developing smart‐grid system, investing on renewable energy research, improving the feed‐in tariff system and clarifying the subsidy system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]