Environmental co-benefits of climate mitigation: Evidence from clean development mechanism projects in China

IF 5.2 1区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

中国经济评论 Pub Date : 2024-04-30 DOI:10.1016/j.chieco.2024.102182

Panbing Wan , ZhongXiang Zhang , Lin Chen

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Abstract

The carbon reduction effects of climate mitigation have received much attention, but less attention has been paid to the co-benefits of climate mitigation such as such as air pollution reduction and related health impacts. This oversight may have led to an underestimation of the broader welfare effects of climate mitigation and thus hindering its progress in implementation. This paper investigates the co-benefits of climate mitigation through focusing on the pollution reduction effects of the implementation of the clean development mechanism (CDM), which is an important climate mitigation mechanism to enhance north-south climate cooperation. Using a unique firm-level dataset with data on China's CDM projects from 1998 to 2012, we show that the CDM implementation reduced sulfur dioxide emissions. Mechanism analyses show that the CDM implementation alleviated firms' financing constraints and promoted fossil energy savings, thereby reducing emissions of air pollutants that usually coexist with greenhouse gases in burning fossil fuels. We also find that the CDM didn't bring about the expected technological progress. These results highlight environmental co-benefits of climate mitigation and provide important implications for international climate cooperation

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气候减缓的环境共同效益：中国清洁发展机制项目的证据

气候减缓的减碳效应已受到广泛关注，但对气候减缓的共同效益，如减少空气污染和相关的健康影响却关注较少。这种疏忽可能导致人们低估了气候减缓的广泛福利效应，从而阻碍了气候减缓的实施进展。清洁发展机制（CDM）是加强南北气候合作的重要气候减缓机制，本文通过关注清洁发展机制实施过程中的污染减排效应来研究气候减缓的共同效益。利用独特的企业层面数据集，以及 1998 年至 2012 年中国清洁发展机制项目的数据，我们发现清洁发展机制的实施减少了二氧化硫的排放。机制分析表明，清洁发展机制的实施缓解了企业的融资约束，促进了化石能源的节约，从而减少了通常在燃烧化石燃料时与温室气体共存的空气污染物的排放。我们还发现，清洁发展机制并没有带来预期的技术进步。这些结果凸显了气候减缓的环境共同效益，并为国际气候合作提供了重要启示。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

中国经济评论 ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

10.60

自引率

4.40%

发文量

380

期刊介绍： The China Economic Review publishes original works of scholarship which add to the knowledge of the economy of China and to economies as a discipline. We seek, in particular, papers dealing with policy, performance and institutional change. Empirical papers normally use a formal model, a data set, and standard statistical techniques. Submissions are subjected to double-blind peer review.