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Environmental decentralization is an institutional factor that influences the effect of ecological environment governance. Based on panel data of provinces in China from 2008 to 2015, this paper evaluates the indicators of environmental decentralization, and uses a fixed-effect model and a threshold model to test the influence of environmental decentralization and environmental regulation on environmental pollution. The results indicate that China's environmental decentralization can significantly curb environmental pollution in general. There is a U-shaped relationship between environmental decentralization and environmental pollution. Reasonable environmental decentralization can restrain environmental pollution, while excessive environmental decentralization aggravates environmental pollution. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and environmental pollution. If the intensity of environmental regulation is too low, it cannot inhibit environmental pollution, while if the intensity of environmental regulation is increased to a certain level, it can help to inhibit environmental pollution. The joint impact of environmental decentralization and environmental regulation cannot reduce environmental pollution. That is, with the enlargement of environmental decentralization, environmental regulation fails to reduce environmental pollution. The effect of environmental decentralization has significant regional heterogeneity in economic development level and emission intensity. The above conclusions have important reference value for optimizing the environmental decentralization system and formulating scientific environmental decentralization policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental regulations are considered a prerequisite for environmental performance. However, very limited studies have explored the asymmetric relationship between clean energy consumption, environmental regulation, and CO2 emissions. This study scrutinizes the asymmetry phenomenon in environmental regulation-clean energy consumption and environmental quality nexus in China by using the time series nonlinear ARDL approach by covering the period 1993–2019. The result reveals that the impact of environmental regulation on clean energy consumption and CO2 emissions is asymmetric. A positive change in environmental regulation has a positive effect on clean energy consumption but a negative impact on CO2 emissions in the long run. While a negative change in environmental regulation has insignificant effects on clean energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the long run. The study suggests that China should need to revisit environmental regulation policies that could help in improving environmental quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]