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• Quantifying the impact of peer pressure on environmental improvements among local governments in China. • Investigating cities ' reaction to declining air quality rankings through regression discontinuity design. • Demonstrating the efficacy of political incentives in combating pollution and the catalytic effect of rankings on policy action. • Assessing the benefits resulting from air pollution reductions using an exposure response function. This paper estimates the impact of peer governmental pressure on air quality using a regression discontinuity design inherent in China's air quality ranking system. Because air quality rankings are important for political evaluations, local officials who witnessed a decline in air quality ranking are motivated to enforce more stringent environmental standards compared to their counterparts with increased rankings. By exploiting this regulatory discontinuity with monthly air quality ranking data from 2012 to 2020 of 169 cities, we find that cities experiencing a lower air quality ranking in the current month compared to the previous month exhibit a subsequent improvement in air quality during the following month, as evidenced by decreased pollutant concentrations. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that in cities where pollutant rankings decline more sharply, officials are less likely to encounter fewer promotion opportunities. Importantly, we observe that the discontinuity in individual pollutant concentrations is not solely influenced by their respective rankings but is also impacted by the overall A ir Q uality I ndex (AQI) ranking. Linking the reduction in air pollutants concentration with the economic benefits, a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates the decrease in premature deaths due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases amounts to approximately 200 thousand, resulting in an associated economic saving of more than 600 billion Chinese yuan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with the impact of listed corporates' environment, social responsibility, and corporate governance (ESG) on financing and market value, considerably less attention is paid to the role of ESG performance in improving environmental quality in China. However, exploring the environmental motivation of listed corporates' ESG engagement is vital for shareholder protection and corporate strategic development under state–business interactions. Thus, we study the relationship between state–business interactions and air pollution from the perspective of ESG using the dataset of Chinese listed corporates. The results demonstrate that the state–business collusion interactions increase air pollution by hindering the fulfillment of ESG. Meanwhile, this impact of heavy pollution corporates is higher than that of industrial corporates. However, the deleterious relationship might be largely improved when state–business interactions are "clean." Finally, we observe that ESG mediates the relationship between state–business interactions and pollutants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy sector matters the sustainable development directly and is sensitive to climate change. A few empirical studies concentrate on how climate change influences firm performance. Climate change brings higher production costs and lower efficiency on the supply side and leads to beneficial sale performance and improves profit. However, it is ambiguous to the relationship of supply–demand and revenue‐cost levels, and their change is not consistent. Using panel data of 99 China‐listed firms active in the energy sector over the period 2000–2020, this study aims to identify the causal relation between climate change and the profitability of energy firms while controlling for firm‐specific and energy market‐related factors. The quantile regression results show that temperature deviation (TDEV) positively impacts the profitability of energy firms, and this impact varies at different quantiles of the profitability distribution. These findings remain unchanged by four robustness checks. Moreover, mechanism results indicate that revenue and cost have different interaction effects on the causal relation. The findings of this study can provide forward‐thinking expectations and assess climatic adaptation and risks, particularly inspired stakeholder engagements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In policy remedies, transportation infrastructure such as metro transit is widely considered to be an important and effective means to reduce air pollution. However, the policy prediction that metro transits reduce air pollution depends on driver responses. China provides an appropriate context to explore the answer since its major cities have expanded their metro transit systems in recent years, which enables us to exploit a natural experiment. Accordingly, a sharp regression discontinuity is employed to evaluate the impact of 112 metro lines (with an accumulation of 3286 km) on air quality. Evidence shows that the opening of metro transits has a negative causal effect on air pollution. The results are robust to several alternative specifications. Furthermore, a heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that metro openings have a time-varying impact on air pollution, which is larger during rush hours. We anticipate that the air quality improvement in China caused by metro transits can generate large welfare gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Investigating how pension coverage reduces energy poverty in rural China. • Exploiting age-based eligibility for pension coverage to address endogeneity. • Anticipatory response is explored to validate the estimates. • Liquidity constraint might restrict anticipatory responses. • Competing interpretations on living arrangements and lifestyle are excluded. This paper estimates the causal effect of income change on reducing energy poverty by exploiting age-based eligibility for China's New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) through a regression discontinuity (RD) design. More than one billion people worldwide live in energy poverty, and the situation is even more difficult in developing world. It is an important development challenge to reduce energy poverty, which could be further associated with health outcome, labor productivity, and educational achievements. While public policies that increase income for poor households are the most direct ways to reduce energy poverty, the reverse causality makes establishing a convincing causal link between income and energy poverty challenging. Using the quasi-experimental variation in income induced by NRPS, this paper addresses the endogeneity of income and examines the impact of exogenous sharp changes in income on energy consumption behaviors. The findings indicate substantial increases in modern energy consumption and sizable reductions in solid fuels (e.g., straw and fuelwood), suggesting that "windfall income" by pension coverage alleviates energy poverty. Although individuals could anticipate the income shocks by pension coverage, the evidence suggests that they do not engage in anticipatory responses to smooth their consumption. Further evidence shows that liquidity constraints may be the underlying mechanism for the lack of anticipatory responses in household energy consumption. Besides reducing energy poverty, the results demonstrate that pension coverage leads to a decrease in elderly labor supply, an increase in subjective health and life satisfaction, and an increase in non-energy consumption, all of which are positively associated with the well-beings of senior citizens. We anticipate that the findings of this paper in the context of China may be extended to developing world which has been expected to set up targeted measures to tackle energy poverty in upcoming decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of international specialization has evolved from "intra-industry" to "intra-product," resulting in the establishment of value chains that traverse all participating nations. However, it might lead to the "lock-in low-value" effect of global value chains (GVCs) and the consequential "pollution shelter" effect, which have both hindered the green transformation of the economy. Rather than solely focusing on promoting participation in GVCs, this paper seeks to expand its purview to include national value chains (NVCs) based on endogenous resource integration, with a focus on constructing and nurturing NVCs to enhance regional green economy performance index (GEPI). We find that improving NVCs positions can increase regional GEPI, while GVCs and NVCs participation inhibit GEPI. Moreover, the impact of GVCs and NVCs positions and participation on GEPI presents significant and spatiotemporal heterogeneities. Finally, the mechanism analysis demonstrates that GVCs positions increase human capital investment and NVCs positions increase the rationalization of the industrial structure, promoting green economy performance. Meanwhile, China's GVCs and NVCs participation increase the industrial proportion, which is not conducive to improving green economy performance. • Quantifying China's international trade's environmental effects through value chain specialization. • NVCs positions can strengthen the effect of the green economy performance. • Participation in value chain displays an adverse impact on green economy performance. • Investigating the heterogeneities of green economy performance along GVCs and NVCs position and participation. • Exploring channels through which of value chain specialization affect green economy performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence suggests that exposure to air pollution adversely impacts health outcomes, cognitive function, and labor productivity, however, less is known about the effect of air pollution exposure on social conflicts. Using daily air pollution, we study the effect of exposure to air pollution on social conflicts. For identification strategies, we estimate models with high-dimensional fixed effects and two instrumental variables using atmospheric inversions and wind patterns as exogenous shocks to local pollution. Our findings suggest a positive impact of air pollution on social conflicts, and the magnitude is larger with more severe pollution exposure. Moreover, the significant differences exist between social conflicts occurring in different workplaces, and those occurring at development levels, both of which are related to the extent of pollution exposure. Finally, taking lottery sales as a proxy for risk preference to investigate the potential mechanisms, we show that the increased social conflicts alone with pollution exposure may be attributed to the rising risk preference. This provides indirect support for a plausible channel through which air pollution results in behavioral and social outcomes. The results are robust to alternative specifications and placebos. The findings suggest that reducing air pollution gains the unintended consequence of preventing social conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it the heavy industry or light industry that performs better in energy efficiency incorporating undesirable outputs? Energy efficiency is the gap between actual and target energy inputs, thus the more energy intensive heavy industry is not necessarily the less energy efficient one. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and compare the ecological total-factor energy efficiency (ETFEE) of the heavy and light industries as well as to assess their technology gaps. Considering the slack-bias of conventional DEA models and technological heterogeneity between heavy and light industries, the slack-based DEA model (SBM) and meta-frontier technology have been combined. The empirical results show that: (1) China's industries did not perform efficiently. Among them, heavy industry, albeit has more advanced technology, demonstrates lower energy efficiency than light industry. Thus, China needs to stimulate heavy industry to achieve its potential in efficiency improvement. (2) Compared with light industry, governmental stimulus induced expansion has promoted technological advancement in heavy industry, but it still has had no effect on the utilization of existing technologies by, for example, improving the managerial efficiency. Greater pressure on environmental standards is needed to motivate factories in heavy industry to utilize existing technologies more sufficiently. (3) Technological gap among industries has enlarged, thus more attention should be paid on encouraging technology spillover from heavy industry to light industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When talking about energy conservation, "Rebound Effect" (RE) is always concerned, which defined as the increasing energy consumption relative to the counterfactual predicted by technological progress because of efficiency induced decrease in the real price of energy services. In this paper, we try to find a way to figure out the RE through calculating the substitution relations accord with the definition. Based on the trans-log cost function and considering the asymmetric impact on energy-cost share equation, the paper applies Allen-Uzawa substitution elasticity to establish the price-oriented analysis diagram of fossil-energy consumption RE. Using time series data, applying the joint method of the dynamic OLS (DOLS) and the seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR), the RE in China's electricity generation sector is estimated. The results showed that the RE is 11.6% in China's electricity generation sector if allowing for asymmetric price effects, which indicates that China's power generation sector generally displays a feature of energy saving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-fossil energy increases the non-dispatchability of power system, requiring fossil-based technologies to provide back-up capacity as dispatchable source. In a coal-based economy like China, it is coal-fired units that act as back-up capacity. This paper shows that increase of non-fossil energy generation is associated with higher heat rates of coal-fired units, which can be explained by the decreased operating hours for dispatching. This side-effect is sizeable, accounting for 13% of carbon mitigation from non-fossil energy. The extra fuel cost is estimated to be 10.9 billion US dollars. This paper thus calls attention to alternative technologies, such as large-scale storage, as dispatchable source. • Dispatching policy ensures the exogeneity of non-fossil energy in regression. • Discussing how non-fossil energy increases the heat rate of coal-fired units. • Calling attention to the essential role of coal-fired units as dispatchable source. • Highlighting the indirect cost of integrating non-fossil energy for power system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy is believed to be the central issue in sustainable development. Literatures on renewables׳ costs are rather sparse, especially on costs of integration and system balancing. The objective of this paper is to fill the research gap by providing an assessment for the cost of China׳s grid-connected renewable energy development and analyze its sharing between different stakeholders. Due to China׳s pricing mechanism of renewable energy and their cost decreasing potential, the pricing model of feed-in tariff and dynamic technological learning processes are employed. In the estimation of purchasing cost, the positive bias is overcome by considering China׳s energy-saving dispatching policy. The results suggest that purchasing cost would be 32.57–40.80 billion Yuan over 2012–2020, and peak in 2017. Grid integration costs which further involve costs of grid infrastructure and system balancing are also investigated. We find that grid infrastructure will cost 27.88 billion Yuan by 2015 and soar to 45.32 billion by 2020, while system balancing will cost 31.49 billion Yuan in 2015 and 63.97 billion Yuan in 2020 among which a substantial part (over 60%) comes from electricity loss in energy transfer. The different parts of these costs are underwritten by disparate participants due to China׳s renewable energy policies and its institutional arrangement. Purchasing cost is shared by power consumers through RES; the cost of grid infrastructure is mainly covered by grid enterprises; and there is no mechanism to specify how to share the cost electricity loss during system balancing which might become a major obstacle for system balancing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China’s oil imports have increased significantly and will play a bigger role in the future. We incorporate the “China factor” into oil price. The main findings are (1) long-run trends of oil price are determined by oil supply and demand; emergencies would cause oil price volatility in the short run; (2) macroeconomic effects of oil price increases depend on the underlying factors that drive oil price; (3) China’s oil import, which can only explain 4.6 percent of oil price change, has a relatively small influence on oil price volatility; but (4) China affects the long-run trends of oil price by changing the fundamentals of the oil market, especially after financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on provincial panel data in China, we study the causal relationship between generation hours and coal consumption rate of coal-fired power and its implication for energy conservation in China’s energy development plan. Empirical results suggest that (1) low generation hours resulting from peak regulation were the main reason for poor efficiency of coal-fired power units in China; (2) increase in power generation hours reduces the coal consumption rate of coal-fired units, but about 70 percent of this effect depends on the dispatching modes; (3) according to China’s Twelfth Five-Year Energy Plan, generation hours of coal-fired power will decrease by 2015 compared to that of 2006–10, which would have adverse effects on coal consumption of rate of coal-fired power plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's economic growth has been progressively moving towards reducing carbon intensity. In parallel, Japan has long been regarded as the pioneer of energy efficiency worldwide. Why have these two economic giants had such different experiences of carbon intensity in the past decades? A closer examination in both countries may hold vital clues, which are still very unclear. This paper compares the patterns of carbon intensity between China and Japan, in which we propose a bilateral-country decomposition framework by combining production-theoretical decomposition analysis and index decomposition analysis. The decomposition highlights the effects of emission factor, energy structure, sectoral structure, substitution among labor-energy and capital-energy, and technological progress. The results show that the energy structure, sectoral structure, and capital-energy substitution are the main drivers behind that China is much higher carbon intensity than Japan, accounting for 26%, 25%, and 38%, respectively. Yet, these effects also narrowed the carbon intensity gap between China and Japan over the years. Furthermore, the labor-energy substitution effect has generally decreased the carbon intensity gap. The technological effect has a minor impact on the carbon intensity gap per year, while it plays a dominant role in enlarging the carbon intensity gap over time. • An improved approach is proposed to decompose driving forces of carbon intensity. • The approach is applied to carbon intensity gap between China and Japan. • Potential energy intensity of each sector is uncovered by input substitution. • Enabling policymakers in developing countries to reduce carbon intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China, with a heavy dependence on coal power, has announced a clear goal of carbon neutrality by 2060. Electrification of final energy use and high penetration of renewable energy are essential to achieve this. The resulting growth of intermittent renewables and changes in demand curve profiles require greater flexibility in the power system for real-time balancing – greater ability of generators and consumers to ramp up and down. However, the plan and market system with regulated prices makes this challenging. We discuss the options to improve flexibility, including 1) increasing supply-side flexibility, through retrofitting existing power plants to boost their responsiveness; 2) promoting flexibility from power grids, through building an efficient power grid with inter-provincial and inter-regional transmission capacity to balance spatial mismatch, given that China has a vast territory; 3) encouraging demand flexibility, through demand-response measures to enable demand shifting over time and space to address fluctuations in renewable energy generation; and 4) providing flexibility from energy storage. We consider policies to achieve this, in particular, power market reforms to unlock the flexibility potential of these sources. Regulated electricity prices and lack of auxiliary services markets are major obstacles and we discuss how markets in other countries provide lessons in providing incentives for a more flexible system. • Carbon neutrality requires electrification and intermittent renewables. • Discuss options to improve flexibility in power system with high renewables. • Attention to technology and market policies in system with regulated prices and quotas. • Exploring how markets in other countries may provide lessons for China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coordinated development of green finance (GF) and the renewable energy industry (REI) is crucial for accelerating energy transition and mitigating climate change. However, the existing literature has overlooked the bidirectional relationship between GF and REI. Using provincial data from 2007 to 2019, this study investigates the coupling coordination degree of GF and REI (GRCC) and its spatiotemporal distribution characteristics and driving factors. The findings indicate that both GF and REI experienced stable growth during the study period, but REI lagged behind GF, and their spatial distribution displayed asymmetrical characteristics. Although GRCC exhibited a stable growth trend and slight coordination at both national and regional levels, it displayed large interprovincial differences and spatial agglomeration characteristics. Notably, high GRCC values were primarily concentrated in a few provinces in southwest and south-central regions, spreading to the east. Furthermore, financial development, renewable energy endowment, economy scale, technological innovation, environmental regulation, and fiscal expenditure were identified as the main drivers of GRCC. This study provides a Chinese case study for global energy transition and introduces new ideas for synergy between REI and GF policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that China is committed to peak its carbon dioxide emissions in or before 2030 under the Paris Agreement, promoting renewable energy to substitute coal is one critical solution to facilitate China to meet this commitment. Among various types of renewable energy, solar energy is an attractive choice that will significantly influence the future of energy supply and energy usage. We first provide an overview of the most recent development of solar energy in China, in which the changing pattern from stationary to distributive forms is highlighted. We show that the diversified prices and subsidies across regions may play an important role in the changing pattern. Furthermore, we find major challenges that might impede the future expansion of solar energy. To address these challenges, governments need to propose policies to develop technologies and meditate the benefits of stakeholders, especially grid companies and electricity end-users. Market-based policies are also expected to accelerate the learning-by-doing process through R&D investment, which will help reduce and ultimately eliminate solar subsidies. • An overview of the most recent development of solar energy in China. • A new pattern from stationary to distributive forms of solar energy is highlighted. • Reasons for the changing pattern: Diversified prices and subsidies. • Challenges and policy options for the expansion of China's solar energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emissions from heavy urban traffic have been the most abundant components of urban air pollution in China. Compared to the fast increasing consumption of automobile, the growth rate of urban traffic infrastructure investment (UTII) is relative low. It is a controversial issue for the policymaker whether promoting the UTII could make a positive impact on reducing air pollution or not. This study is designed to test the relations between the UTII and air quality, using the data of 83 cities from 2000 to 2012. Based on the empirical results from the fixed effect model and dynamic panel data model, increasing the UTII could generally mitigate the air pollution, but the long-run and short-run effects are significantly different. In the short run, the UTII effect on air quality is −0.02, since the urban traffic infrastructure construction might cause more detours and road blockages, which would enhance the fine-particle emissions of the low-speed traffic. In contrast, the UTII could widen the roads and make the traffic system more accessible in the long run, so the estimated positive effect is about 0.05. The robustness tests about different regions and scales of cities are conducted. Policy suggestions are further recommended to reduce air pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China receives great global attention for its energy consumption. To implement effective and fair policies to save energy, it is critical to understand what drives China's energy consumption and regional disparities. Most of previous studies failed to include indirect factors embodied in the inter-sectoral and regional input-output flows. Therefore, a hybrid structural decomposition analysis is conducted to explore drivers of energy consumption and regional disparities. The results present: (1) energy, directly or indirectly, is flowing from coastal regions to Northwest, Southwest and Central China. (2) The growth of residents' income to contribution of energy consumption is by 106.7% and 169.8% during 2002–2007 and 2007–2012, respectively. Meanwhile, the positive impact of income on energy consumption is larger in urban than rural areas, and the structure effect has a significantly negative impact on energy consumption in Northwest and Southwest regions. (3) By factors, the substitution effect non-energy to energy inputs in industry sector might bring more energy consumption. By sectors, the technological advancement of the non-industry sectors decreases energy consumption by 31.7% and 174.6% during 2002–2007 and 2007–2012, respectively. Technological advancement of industry sectors plays the most important role in increasing energy consumption across China. [Display omitted] • Developing a hybrid structural decomposition analysis to capture drivers of energy consumption and regional disparities. • Income effect is more important than structure effect to explain increase of energy consumption. • The impacts of technical progress on energy consumption vary by regions, factors and sectors. • The industry and income effect contribute most to the increase in the energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The variation of strength with loading rate under various loading modes were revealed for cement-stabilized macadam. • The fatigue properties of cement stabilized macadam under different loading modes were uniformly characterized. • The new strength structure coefficient associated with the loading rate was proposed for cement-stabilized macadam. Cement-stabilized macadam is widely employed as a base-layer of pavement in China, because of its high strength and stiffness. However, fatigue cracking of the cement-stabilized macadam based pavement is prone to occur under multiple traffic loads, which affects the service life of the pavement. The main objective of this work is to reveal the fatigue characteristics of cement-stabilized macadam under various loading modes by developing a unified fatigue characteristics model. To this end, an unconfined compressive strength test, indirect tensile strength test, and four-point bending strength test were conducted for the cement-stabilized macadam samples under various loading rates. A power function was employed to the pattern of variation of strength with loading rates. The stress ratio of the fatigue test associated with the loading rate was obtained and defined as the rate-dependent stress ratio. Also, the fatigue tests under various loading modes were implemented based on the rate-dependent stress ratio and nominal stress ratio. The preliminary laboratory experimental results showed that it is challenging to compare fatigue performance under different loading modes based on nominal stress ratio. However, the problems of uncertainty and non-uniqueness of fatigue characteristics under various loading modes were resolved by employing the idea of rate-dependent stress ratio in the correlation analyses. Based on that, the new strength structure coefficient associated with the loading rate was proposed in this study. Therefore, the proposed research results provided the fundamental understanding of the fatigue resistance design of pavement with semi-rigid base-layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic-related air pollution has become an urgent problem in many developing countries with rapid industrialization and urbanization. Traffic infrastructure construction, especially road reconstruction, is a prominent instrument of improving the road capacity and then affecting air quality. We employ the road area as the proxy variable of road infrastructure construction and further divide the road reconstruction pattern into lengthening pattern and widening pattern, respectively to evaluate the impact on urban air quality. The empirical result shows that the coefficient of road infrastructure construction represented by the road area is between −0.0818 and −0.0905, which means increasing road area has an emission-alleviating effect on air pollution. Moreover, we also find that the effect of road lengthening on air quality is better than road widening in the eastern China, but the improvement of road widening in the Central and Western China is better than the road lengthening. The result provides a valuable reference for policy recommendations on urban road infrastructure planning to improve air quality. • An empirical study is conducted to explore the effect of road construction. • Air pollution index is selected as the dependent variable to measure urban air quality. • An increase in road area can improve air quality. • Two road construction methods both have air pollution-reducing effect. • In the eastern cities, road lengthening is more effective in improving air quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The Ayyagari model was applied to semi-rigid layers materials. • The unified fatigue model was obtained based on yield criterion. • A new design index of structural resistance was proposed. As the primary high-grade pavement structure, asphalt pavement with semi-rigid layers has been extensively applied in China. Among the semi-rigid layers materials, cement-treated aggregates (CTA) are an essential pavement element, and its fatigue life significantly affects the durability of the asphalt pavement structure. Various fatigue tests have been adopted to evaluate the fatigue properties of CTA. However, the fatigue resistance of the CTA measured under various methods is different, which seriously affects the accuracy of the structural design of the semi-rigid layers. Hence, this work aims to establish a design criterion for CTA to characterize the structural resistance of semi-rigid layers. The uniaxial compression (UC), four-point bending (4 PB), and indirect tensile (IDT) strength and fatigue tests for CTA were carried out. According to the traditional S - N fatigue model, the curves of fatigue performance and stress ratio of CTA under various stress states are quite different. To intuitively compare the structural resistance of CTA under various test types, the mean stress and effective stress of CTA under different loading rates were obtained. The yield surface was then established based on the Ayyagari model, considering the multiaxial yield criterion of CTA. The effective stress ratio was defined, and its relationship with the fatigue life of CTA was established. Based on the Ayyagari model and the normalized equation, the fatigue resistance criterion of semi-rigid layers under the three-dimensional stress state was proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]