Does the Opening of High-Speed Railway Lines Reduce the Carbon Intensity of China’s Resource-Based Cities?

Zhipeng Tang, Ziao Mei and Jialing Zou
Additional contact information
Zhipeng Tang: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Ziao Mei: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Jialing Zou: Guangdong Institute for International Strategies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou 510420, China

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 15, 1-18

Abstract: The carbon intensity of China’s resource-based cities (RBCs) is much higher than the national average due to their relatively intensive mode of development. Low carbon transformation of RBCs is an important way to achieve the goal of reaching the carbon emissions peak in 2030. Based on the panel data from 116 RBCs in China from 2003 to 2018, this study takes the opening of high-speed railway (HSR) lines as a quasi-experiment, using a time-varying difference-in-difference (DID) model to empirically evaluate the impact of an HSR line on reducing the carbon intensity of RBCs. The results show that the opening of an HSR line can reduce the carbon intensity of RBCs, and this was still true after considering the possibility of problems with endogenous selection bias and after applying the relevant robustness tests. The opening of an HSR line is found to have a significant reducing effect on the carbon intensity of different types of RBC, and the decline in the carbon intensity of coal-based cities is found to be the greatest. Promoting migration of RBCs with HSR lines is found to be an effective intermediary way of reducing their carbon intensity.

Keywords: resource-based city; high-speed railway; carbon intensity; difference-in-difference method; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/15/4648/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/15/4648/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:15:p:4648-:d:605765

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().