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Abstract Regional disparity in terms of industrial energy efficiency is noticeable in China due to the unbalanced economic progress in past decades. Analyzing the provincial industrial energy efficiency and its influencing factors is of great significance to formulate differentiated policies. To date, the influence of many social-economic factors on the industrial energy efficiency have been examined but the impact of the inter-industry structure has almost been ignored. In this paper, the slacks-based measure model incorporating undesirable output is applied to evaluate the industrial energy efficiency both at the provincial level and the sectoral level in China for the period 2010 to 2016. Then, industrial structure efficiency is introduced, which reflects the inter-industry structure and takes the sectoral-level energy efficiency into consideration. And the impact of the industrial structure efficiency on provincial industrial energy efficiency is tested by Tobit regression model. The results show that huge discrepancies of provincial industrial energy efficiency exist and the industrial structure efficiency is confirmed to be a determinative factor to the provincial industrial energy efficiency, with the coefficient of 0.525. Policy recommendations are provided for adjusting the provincial inter-industry structure and improving the industrial energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Severe industrial pollution has largely hindered the sustainable development of China. Taking Shenzhen’s electroplating industry as a case, this article investigates the current status of the industry and proposes a specialized policy framework to push its environmental innovation. There is a relatively complete environmental management system in Shenzhen’s government, but it does not work well when dealing with the electroplating industry, mainly because it lacks regulation aiming at production technology, which is the underlying decisive factor of the environmental performance of the industry. So, we first develop an evaluation criterion, which incorporates a technological index about whether enterprises engage identified obsolete technologies. With this evaluation criterion, enterprises are classified into “advanced” and “obsolete”. Then, we propose specific policy suggestions for different types of enterprises, including command and control mixed with economic tools, voluntary agreements, establishing electroplating parks, and improving current management system. Finally, we assess the impact of the policy proposal and prove it to be conducive to the sustainable development of the industry and conclude it from a more general perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturing is the foundation of China's economy and accounts for a large proportion of China's CO 2 emissions. In this study, the structural path decomposition (SPD) methodology, based on an environmental input-output model, was used to find critical supply chain paths that drive changes in CO 2 life cycle in China's manufacturing industry from 1992 to 2012. The changes in CO 2 emissions were decomposed into three main factors: carbon emissions intensity, input-output structure, and final demand. In this study, the “weighted average decompositions” method of structural decomposition analysis and the non-comparable input-output table were first applied to the SPD method to obtain accurate results. The results indicate that higher-order paths, especially the paths that started from the “Smelting and Rolling of Metals” and the “Production and Supply of Electricity and Steam” sectors, led to an increase in carbon emissions. This was mainly due to the extension of the industrial chain as well as policy priorities. Moreover, CO 2 emissions from the “Chemical Industry”, “Manufacture of Nonmetallic Mineral Products”, and “Smelting and Rolling of Metals” sectors were mainly induced by the increase of final export demands. Based on the results of this study, relevant policy changes have also been recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The photovoltaic poverty alleviation project (PPAP), as an integration of solar photovoltaics and poverty alleviation, has gained great attention since it was proposed in China. So far, four different modes of PPAP have been formed - household level, village level, jointly-village level, and centralized PPAP. A comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of different PPAP modes is essential to achieve the aim of getting rid of poverty in Chinese rural areas and to provide references for other developing countries. Therefore, this paper, for the first time, evaluates the economic performance of PPAP under the four modes. By employing cost-benefit analysis, this research elaborates on the effectiveness of PPAP from three aspects – cashflow, net present value, and payback period. The results show that the village level and the jointly-village level PPAP are the most effective modes. However, due to the overplus of installed capacity per household, the centralized PPAP, which is in line with the local governments' income, becomes the most popular mode. Besides, bank loans can significantly increase the number of benefited households, and the beneficiary ratio is critical to the effectiveness of corporations' participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]