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Urbanization and the release of carbon emission are two significant features of contemporary economic and social progress in China. However, there are few studies that consider how urbanization policy goals affect carbon emission. This paper aims to study the nonlinear effects of urbanization policy goals on carbon emission in 13 cities of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. In this paper, a multi-dimensional spatial disturbance grey model is proposed. Based on matrix perturbation theory, this paper explores the spatial perturbation bounds of the novel model and verifies that the spatial property of the model is consistent with the viewpoint of the First Law of Geography. Then, the novel model is used to predict the urban carbon emission under different urbanization policy goal scenarios. The results showed that the novel model has spatial regional correlation in spatial region prediction. With the development of urbanization level, carbon emissions show a downward trend in more than 50% of cities from 2022 to 2025. In addition, the improvement of urbanization policy goals will promote the carbon peak time of most cities. The carbon emission intensity will exhibit an inverted U-shaped trend distribution in space. The research results are conducive to providing scientific guidance for the formulation of new-type urbanization policies and helping to achieve the dual carbon goals. • A multi-dimensional spatial disturbance grey model is proposed. • The novel grey model is consistent with the viewpoint of the First Law of Geography. • The spatial distribution of carbon intensity showed an inverted U-shaped pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming poses a prominent challenge to every country. As one of the largest developing countries, China has experienced rapid economic transformation in its pursuit of sustainable development. This paper delves into a quasi-natural environmental experiment conducted in China, specifically focusing on the low-carbon city program initiated in 2010. Our study uncovers the phenomenon of regional competition among Chinese local governments with regard to carbon emissions, which in turn generates spillover effects stemming from the policy. To identify the effects of the low-carbon city policy on both economic and environmental development, we employ the spatial difference-in-differences approach. Our analysis suggests that reductions in carbon emissions in the pilot cities will lead to a decrease in carbon emissions and economic performance in the surrounding areas. Finally, by exploring firm-level data, we find that the policy significantly impacts large private firms operating in non-secondary industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic agglomeration has played a key function in China's economic transformation. Meanwhile, structural adjustment and external pressure to reduce carbon emission necessitate a deeper investigation into its relationship with carbon productivity. This paper measures economic agglomeration and carbon productivity of 281 cities in China in 2003–2017. With the purpose of exploring the spatial effect of economic agglomeration on carbon productivity, a spatial Durbin model is constructed. In addition, the mediation effect model is also adopted for examining the transmission mechanism of economic scale and technological progress on economic agglomeration as well as carbon productivity. A heterogeneity test is also carried out to uncover the varying effects of economic agglomeration on carbon productivity. The empirical results suggest that economic agglomeration raises carbon productivity not only in the local cities but also in the neighbouring ones. The impact of economic agglomeration on carbon productivity becomes more potent as the level of economic agglomeration increases. For cities with low level of economic agglomeration, the effect is mainly achieved through the expansion of economic scale, but for cities with high level of economic agglomeration, the effect is mainly achieved through technological progress. Therefore, we suggest encouraging carbon productivity improvement through technology effect in cities with high economic agglomeration level, while enhancing carbon productivity through scale effect in cities with low economic agglomeration level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After setting the goal of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, it has become an irresistible trend for China to decouple carbon emissions from its economic growth. Since cities play a central role in reducing carbon emissions, the issues such as whether and when their carbon dioxide emissions can be decoupled from economic growth have become the focus of attention. Based on the carbon dioxide emissions of 264 prefecture-level cities in China from 2000 to 2017, this paper uses the Tapio decoupling index to measure the decoupling relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth of cities, analyzes the space–time evolution characteristics of carbon emissions and decoupling indexes by stages, and explores the relationship between carbon emissions and socio-economic development characteristics such as per capita GDP and industrial structure. The main conclusions drawn therefrom are as follows: (i) From 2000 to 2017, the city-wide carbon emissions rose from 2.484 billion tons in 2000 to 7.462 billion tons in 2017, registering a total increase of 200.40%. But the growth rate of carbon emissions within cities has been significantly reduced. (ii) As years passed by, the number of cities that achieved strong decoupling saw a significant increase, from zero in the 10th–11th Five-Year Plan period to 14 in the 12th Five-Year Plan period and the first two years of the 13th Five-Year Plan period, accounting for 5.3% of the total number of cities. (iii) There is an inverted U-shaped curve relationship between per capita carbon emissions and per capita GDP, which is consistent with the EKC curve hypothesis, but Chinese cities are still in the growth stage of the quadratic curve currently. The correlation between per capita CO2 emission and the proportion of the secondary industry was positive. The results of this study are expected to provide experience for the low-carbon development of cities in China and other developing countries, and provide references for the formulation and evaluation of policies and measures related to low-carbon economic development based on the decoupling model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper integrates low-carbon development into the context of economic resilience, thus proposing "Low-carbon Economic Resilience" (LER). We establish an analysis framework to analyze LER based on regional interactions. The framework indicates that regions achieve LER by transferring the development burden to others, which will result in inter-regional trade inequality. An empirical analysis focused on inter-regional trade in cities of China is carried out to illustrate this framework. We calculate the degree of economic resilience and low-carbon development in cities of China. Then we trace the environmental-economic benefits embodied in virtual built-up land flow in regions. The characteristics of virtual built-up land flow exert an impact on the spatial distribution of regional economic resilience to a certain extent. The results show that, in China, many cities achieved only economic resilience or low-carbon development, while a few cities were able to achieve LER. The latter imported built-up land with high carbon emissions or low economic benefits from others, while developing "high-quality" built-up land themselves, which was reflected in the benefits per hectare of built-up land. The differences in environmental-economic benefits from inter-regional trade cause trade inequality, and major cities are the main beneficiaries, which contributes to their achievement of LER. • Low-carbon economic resilience is proposed. • Quantifying the environmental-economic benefits of inter-regional trade of cities in China. • Dividing built-up land into 4 categories to match MRIO model. • Analyzing low-carbon economic resilience based on regional interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "double carbon" goal has proposed new "green" requirements for China's low-carbon economic development, and green technology innovation (GTI) has become an important way to coordinate economic and sustainable development. The study explores the spatial-temporal evolution of carbon emission intensity (CEI) of Chinese prefecture-level cities, analyses the nonlinear impact of GTI on the CEI by constructing a panel quantile model, and draws the following conclusions. First, CEI shows a decreasing trend from 2006 to 2019 and a spatial distribution pattern of "high in the north and low in the south, high in the west and low in the east". Second, GTI significantly reduces CEI, and as the quantile point increases, the carbon reduction effect of GTI is characterized by a U-shaped change, decreasing first and then increasing. Overall, GTI has a significantly more profound inhibiting effect on high CEI regions than on low CEI regions. Third, there is spatial heterogeneity in the impact of GTI on CEI across the four major regions and diverse policy contexts. The study proposes countermeasures for low-carbon development in terms of tapping the potential of GTI, strengthening its regional synergy, and applying locally appropriate measures, to gain the great practical significance for achieving the double carbon target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of differentiated emission reduction strategies plays an important role in achieving carbon compliance targets. Each city should adopt carbon reduction strategies according to its carbon emission characteristics. China is a vast country, and there are significant differences between cities. Therefore, this study classifies 340 Chinese cities according to their carbon emission characteristics since 2020 and proposes differentiated emission reduction strategies accordingly. The results of the research show that Chinese cities can be divided into four categories, and they can strive to achieve their carbon peak targets by adopting differentiated emission reduction strategies. In the baseline scenario, Chinese cities will not be able to meet the peak carbon target by 2030. In the differentiated scenario, eco-agricultural cities, industry-led cities, and high-resource-availability cities will be able to achieve peak carbon by 2030. Unfortunately, resource-poor cities will not reach their peak. However, the extent to which their total carbon emissions contribute to the achievement of national goals is low, and their carbon emissions can be traded off for economic development by appropriately relaxing the constraints on carbon emissions. Therefore, in order to achieve China's peak carbon goal, this study proposes emission reduction recommendations that should be adopted by different types of cities to form differentiated emission reduction strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over the correlation between economic growth and environmental pollution has attracted a great deal of attention from academic researchers and policy makers in recent years. There has been excessive use of spatial econometric models and too much emphasis on statistical procedures in empirical studies. In this study, we contribute to the existing literature by conducting a more rigorous analysis of the relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions in Chinese cities using spatial Durbin models. Our results show that CO2 emissions increase monotonically in relation to economic growth at the city level and that the driving effects of economic growth are slightly smaller in central China than in eastern and western China. In addition to economic growth, industry’s share of the economy is a major driver of CO2 emissions, while technological improvement, measured by energy intensity per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), and the effectiveness of environmental governance flatten the shape of the environmental Kuznets curve. We provide evidence of local spillover effects of explanatory variables on CO2 emissions. Economic competition as well as technological diffusion are found to exist in Chinese cities in relation to CO2 emissions. We also find carbon leakage between cities only if the per capita GDP of a given city is less than $493 (in 2010 constant dollars). Results hold when robustness checks are performed. Policy makers should carefully consider regional differences and the inherent spatial interactions between factors when formulating carbon reduction policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]