Can carbon trading drive SDG success? Evidence from China's emissions trading pilot schemes

IF 14.2 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Energy Economics Pub Date : 2025-08-30 DOI:10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108877

Yunfei An , Xueqi Zhai , Hao Ding , Dequn Zhou

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent two critical global initiatives, and their interconnections have profound practical implications. To investigate the overall impact of emissions trading system (ETS) on SDGs, this research uses China's emissions trading pilot schemes as a case study and employs the propensity score matching-difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) method to conduct an empirical analysis based on panel data from 266 cities. City-level heterogeneity is analyzed from the perspectives of economic development and resource endowment. The mediating role of energy transition in the impact of ETS on SDGs is further examined through the lenses of energy system performance and transition readiness. The findings indicate that: (a) the ETS significantly improved the overall achievement of SDGs in the pilot cities, (b) the ETS pilot schemes had a positive effect on the SDGs of a range of cities having different economic and resource endowment levels, with a more pronounced effect in cities characterized by lower economic development and higher resource endowment, and (c) the ETS pilots advanced cities' SDGs by enhancing energy system performance. This study recommends leveraging ETS as a strategic tool to advance the achievement of SDGs. It advocates for the development and ongoing enhancement of a broader national carbon trading mechanism, with strengthened oversight of economically underdeveloped regions and resource-dependent cities. Furthermore, support for corporate energy transitions should be intensified to accelerate the attainment of SDGs.

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碳交易能否推动可持续发展目标的成功？来自中国排放交易试点计划的证据

《巴黎协定》和可持续发展目标是两项重要的全球倡议，它们之间的相互联系具有深远的现实意义。为考察碳排放交易制度对可持续发展目标的整体影响，本研究以中国碳排放交易试点为例，采用倾向得分匹配-差异中差异（PSM-DID）方法，基于266个城市的面板数据进行实证分析。从经济发展和资源禀赋的角度分析了城市层面的异质性。能源转型在碳排放交易体系对可持续发展目标影响中的中介作用将通过能源系统绩效和转型准备度进一步研究。结果表明：(a)碳排放交易体系显著提高了试点城市可持续发展目标的总体实现水平；(b)碳排放交易体系试点方案对不同经济和资源禀赋水平城市的可持续发展目标产生了积极影响，其中经济发展水平较低、资源禀赋较高的城市效果更为显著；(c)碳排放交易体系试点通过提高能源系统绩效推动了城市可持续发展目标的实现。本研究建议利用碳排放交易体系作为推动实现可持续发展目标的战略工具。它主张发展并不断加强更广泛的国家碳交易机制，加强对经济不发达地区和资源依赖型城市的监督。此外，应加强对企业能源转型的支持，以加速实现可持续发展目标。

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

Energy Economics ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

18.60

自引率

12.50%

发文量

524

期刊介绍： Energy Economics is a field journal that focuses on energy economics and energy finance. It covers various themes including the exploitation, conversion, and use of energy, markets for energy commodities and derivatives, regulation and taxation, forecasting, environment and climate, international trade, development, and monetary policy. The journal welcomes contributions that utilize diverse methods such as experiments, surveys, econometrics, decomposition, simulation models, equilibrium models, optimization models, and analytical models. It publishes a combination of papers employing different methods to explore a wide range of topics. The journal's replication policy encourages the submission of replication studies, wherein researchers reproduce and extend the key results of original studies while explaining any differences. Energy Economics is indexed and abstracted in several databases including Environmental Abstracts, Fuel and Energy Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, GEOBASE, Social & Behavioral Sciences, Journal of Economic Literature, INSPEC, and more.