Good subsidies or bad subsidies? Evidence from low-carbon transition in China's metallurgical industry

Boqiang Lin () and Mengmeng Xu

Energy Economics, 2019, vol. 83, issue C, 52-60

Abstract: Since the metallurgical industry has become the main source of China's carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption in recent years, low-carbon transition in that industry is of great significance for achieving China's carbon reduction targets. It is generally believed that phasing out fossil fuel subsidies is an effective way to reduce energy-related CO2 emissions since it can increase the energy prices and lower its consumption. This paper aims to investigate whether the energy subsidy removal can promote the low-carbon transition of China's metallurgical industry. Taking inter-fuel and inter-factor substitution effects as the link, we calculate the CO2 mitigation potential on the assumption that the subsidies for each category of fossil energy were eliminated. We find that the metallurgical industry has a sluggish reaction to the changes in energy price. Supposing eliminating the energy subsidies in the period of 2003–2015, the amount of reduced CO2 would be 487.286 million tons, accounting for a slight proportion of the total emissions in the industry. But it is meaningful for the global CO2 mitigation since it approximates the whole CO2 emissions in Norway during the same period. These findings can provide some new insights for the energy subsidy issue and suggest that the additional measures are required to promote the low-carbon transition in China's metallurgical industry rather than just relying on the removal of fossil fuel subsidies.

Keywords: China's metallurgical industry; Fossil fuel subsidies; Low-carbon transition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 L72 Q01 Q54 Q56 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:83:y:2019:i:c:p:52-60

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2019.06.015

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