Central inspections of environmental protection and transition for low-carbon Chinese cities: Policy intervention and mechanism analysis

Asif Razzaq, Arshian Sharif (), Ilhan Ozturk and Xiaodong Yang

Energy Economics, 2023, vol. 124, issue C

Abstract: The central government continues to elevate ecological considerations in local governments' incentive and penalty systems under the relentless pressure of dual carbon objectives. The central inspections of environmental protection (CIEP) program have emerged as an increasingly significant tool and institutional arrangement for environmental governance. Therefore, this study evaluates the impact of CIEP policy intervention on carbon emissions intensity employing the time-varying difference-in-differences model (TV-DID) in 233 Chinese cities from 2008 to 2019. The empirical evidence reveals that CIEP's enforcement significantly reduces carbon emissions intensity, and these effects are consistent for different model specifications. The mechanism analysis indicates that CIEP decreases carbon emissions intensity by improving energy utilization efficiency and intensifying local government environmental attention. The negative influence of CIEP on carbon emission intensity is only significant in eastern cities, high administrative hierarchy cities, and non-resource-based cities but insignificant in mid-western cities, ordinary cities, and resource-based cities. These findings support the CIEP implementation to achieve energy transition and carbon neutrality targets.

Keywords: Central inspections of environmental protection; Carbon emission intensity; Time-varying difference-in-differences; Government attention; Energy utilization efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988323003572
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:124:y:2023:i:c:s0140988323003572

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2023.106859

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 ().