Policy-driven energy transition: China's low-carbon journey and global implications

IF 14.2 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Energy Economics Pub Date : 2025-09-05 DOI:10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108888

Yilong Li , Yongjian Huang , Jie Sheng

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Abstract

This paper examines the effects of China's 2014 Energy Development Strategic Action Plan (EDSAP) on the low-carbon transition of provincial energy consumption from 2007 to 2022. Using an intensity-based difference-in-differences approach with event-study and robustness tests, we show that EDSAP significantly promotes a cleaner energy mix, with effects that intensify over time. Mechanism analysis identifies green finance, technological innovation, and government attention as key drivers, while excessive intervention dampens policy effectiveness. Spatial Durbin results confirm positive direct impacts and reveal spillovers to neighboring provinces, underscoring interregional externalities. Heterogeneity tests further indicate stronger outcomes in provinces with higher marketization and outside the eastern region. These findings highlight how finance, innovation, and governance channels jointly shape the effectiveness of energy transition policies, while also pointing to the importance of calibrated state intervention and cross-regional coordination in advancing China's low-carbon development under the evolving framework of the 2024 Energy Law.

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政策驱动的能源转型：中国的低碳之旅及其全球影响

本文考察了中国2014年能源发展战略行动计划（EDSAP）对2007 - 2022年省级能源消费低碳转型的影响。使用基于强度的差异中差异方法，结合事件研究和稳健性测试，我们表明EDSAP显著促进了更清洁的能源结构，其影响随着时间的推移而增强。机制分析表明，绿色金融、技术创新和政府关注是主要驱动因素，而过度干预则抑制了政策的有效性。空间Durbin结果证实了积极的直接影响，并揭示了对邻近省份的溢出效应，强调了区域间的外部性。异质性检验进一步表明，在市场化程度较高的省份和东部地区以外的省份，效果更强。这些研究结果突出了金融、创新和治理渠道如何共同塑造能源转型政策的有效性，同时也指出了在2024年《能源法》框架下，有针对性的国家干预和跨区域协调对于推进中国低碳发展的重要性。

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.