The effect of low-carbon city construction on PM2.5: Evidence from China

Liming Ge, Heyun Zheng, Kangjuan Lv, Han Huang, Jie-Sheng Tan-Soo and Chen Feng

Energy Economics, 2025, vol. 149, issue C

Abstract: Air pollution poses significant threats to human health and social welfare, severely impeding sustainable urban development. The low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy, designed to control greenhouse gas emissions, may also affect PM2.5. We empirically assess the effect of LCCP policy on PM2.5 by deploying a difference-in-differences strategy. Our findings indicate that, on average, LCCP policy reduces PM2.5 by 2.27 % in pilot cities compared to non-pilot cities. These results are confirmed through robustness tests including instrumental variable analysis, homogeneous treatment effects, Bacon decomposition, and heterogeneity robust estimation. The haze-reducing impact of LCCP policy is particularly pronounced in eastern regions, larger cities, and cities with a high level of information. Mechanisms analysis show that the policy works by enhancing economic development and government support (macro level), increasing industrial scale and competitiveness (meso level), and improving green technology innovation and energy efficiency (micro level). Additionally, LCCP policy exhibits border effect, where its haze reduction effect intensifies with the distance from each pilot city to its provincial border. The effective range of the spillover effect of LCCP policy is within 350 km.

Keywords: Low-carbon city construction; Air pollution; Heterogeneity robust estimation; Border effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q51 Q53 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988325005626
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:149:y:2025:i:c:s0140988325005626

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108735

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().