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China has established and assigned target responsibilities for local officials in energy conservation and created an evaluation indicator, which is a key institutional arrangement that provides local officials with political incentives to promote carbon abatement policies. In this paper, we elaborate on the relationship between China's target responsibility system and CO2 emissions using interprovincial panel data, grouping provinces into Eastern, Central and Western regions to compare China's CO2 emissions convergence between the periods of the 10th Five-year Plan and the 11th Five-year Plan. The analysis indicates that the target responsibility system does not noticeably change local officials' political incentives to engage in carbon abatement because the effect of the target responsibility system for energy conservation seems to be overshadowed by and subject to gross domestic product (GDP) growth targets. Against the backdrop of growing international pressure on climate change issues, this paper argues that China must include in the target responsibility system an indicator of absolute CO2 emissions reduction as a policy objective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate estimation of CO2 emissions is a prerequisite for scientific low-carbon emission policymaking. Based on 20 types of energy consumption data at the prefecture level in China, this paper re-estimates the CO2 emissions of 198 prefecture-level cities in 2016 by using the method of carbon emission coefficient. The spatial pattern and scale characteristics are analyzed, and the conclusions are as follows: (1) Overall, China's urban CO2 emissions show a certain degree of spatial separation in terms of the total amount, per capita emissions, and emission intensity. Cities with the highest CO2 emissions in China are mainly concentrated in North China, East China and Chongqing, while cities with the highest per capita CO2 emissions and emission intensity are mainly concentrated in Northwest and North China. (2) Different types of cities have different CO2 emission characteristics. Resource-based cities have a higher total amount and emission intensity; tourism and underdeveloped cities both have lower values; while super-large-sized cities and many very-large-sized cities have higher CO2 emissions, but their emission intensities are usually lower; and no obvious rules are found in other cities. (3) Spatial analysis shows that cities with higher CO2 emissions are clustered. The Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region, Shandong Province, and Shanxi–Henan–Anhui resource-producing areas are the agglomeration areas of high-emission cities. (4) Scale analysis shows that the characteristics of CO2 emissions at different scales are different. Provincial-level research can help to identify the environmental impact and total effect of carbon emissions, while urban-scale research is helpful to explore the diversity and phases of cities. Finally, based on the main conclusions of this study, the corresponding urban low-carbon policy implications are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the panel data of 30 provinces in China between 1997 and 2011, we employed the extended STIRPAT model and spatial panel econometrics methods to investigate the relationship between financial development and carbon emissions and test the influence of financial development as well as other factors on provincial carbon emissions per capita among Chinese provinces. The estimation results show that: (i) spatial spillover effects play a role in provincial carbon emissions in China; and (ii) the sum of technical effect and structure effect of financial development surpass its' sum of direct effect and wealth effect in China, which suggests that financial development reduces carbon emissions per capita. China should pay more attention to the integration of green finance policy and environmental regulation, and establish appropriate mechanisms to strengthen inter-provincial interaction and coordinated development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]