 Renewable energy investment in China's new demonstration cities: A quasi-natural experimentJiazhen Ren, Ying Liu, Yida Ren and Ping Zhang Utilities Policy, 2025, vol. 96, issue C Abstract: Renewable energy investment (REI) plays a vital role in the country's transition toward a cleaner energy mix. To optimize environmental policy and enhance energy supply stability, China has implemented the New Energy Demonstration Cities (NEDC) initiative. This analysis utilizes panel data from China's A-share listed companies, spanning 2000 to 2023, and conducts a quasi-natural experiment on the NEDC initiative—viewed as a comprehensive policy intervention—to evaluate its impact on REI and explore the underlying mechanisms. The results show that NEDC policies significantly stimulate REI, leading to a 57.44 % increase in investment. Mechanism analysis reveals that these policies promote REI mainly by easing financing constraints, increasing government subsidies, and reducing information asymmetry. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that the positive effects of NEDC policies on REI are more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises and large firms. The findings offer important policy implications for advancing China's green, low-carbon, and sustainable development goals. Keywords: Energy investments; New energy demonstration city policies; Financing constraints; Government subsidies; Information asymmetry (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:juipol:v:96:y:2025:i:c:s0957178725001110 DOI: 10.1016/j.jup.2025.101996 Access Statistics for this article Utilities Policy is currently edited by Beecher, Janice More articles in Utilities Policy from Elsevier |
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