我国低碳转型进程中碳强度与电气化环境库兹涅茨倒U形关联的检验与政策启示

Environmental Kuznets Inverted U-shaped Relation Between Carbon Intensity and Electrification in China's Low-Carbon Transformation Process and Its Policy Implications

中文关键词:  电气化  碳强度  环境库兹涅茨曲线

英文关键词:electrification  carbon intensity  Environmental Kuznets Curves

中文摘要:

      中国正在积极地谋求低碳化转型，政府承诺落实2030年前碳达峰的目标并努力争取2060年实现碳中和。碳强度控制是实现CO₂减排的关键制度，而电气化又与碳排放和经济增长都具有紧密的联系。因此，研究电气化与碳强度的关系对政策设计和制定碳强度控制政策具有重要意义。基于电气化与碳强度关系的现有研究，本文提出了碳排放强度随着电气化水平提高先上升后下降的环境库兹涅茨曲线（EKC）关系假设。本文以中国1997—2016年30个省份的面板数据为对象进行假设检验，并使用空间杜宾模型验证空间效应对结果的影响。结果显示，我国电气化与碳强度之间确实存在显著的倒U形的EKC关系，并且这一结论在考虑空间因素后仍然稳健。EKC曲线的拐点在不考虑空间因素的情况下位于电气化水平为10.52%的位置，在考虑了空间因素后略微后移到10.81%。截至2016年，所有省份的电气化水平均处于EKC拐点的右侧，即电气化水平的提高将对碳强度下降起到显著的促进作用。最后，针对电气化与碳强度关系的一般与空间特征，本文对电气化发展提出了政策建议。

英文摘要:

      China has committed to peaking CO₂ emission by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. Given their close link to carbon emissions and economic development, reduction in carbon intensity and electrification are identified as two important measures in China's low-or zero-carbon energy transformation. Understanding the relationship between electrification and carbon intensity is of great significance for the government to design carbon mitigation polices. However, such relationship has not been comrpehnsively discussed in literature. To fill this gap, this study proposes an Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKC) hypothesis that carbon intensity varies along an inverted U-shape as a function of electrification levels. Here, we adopted the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 1997 to 2016 to test the proposed hypothesis. The spatial Dubin model was applied to verify the influence of spatial heterogeneity on the results. Results showed that an evident "inverted U-shaped" EKC relationship existed between carbon intensity and electfificaiton in China, and this conclusion was robust after taking spatial effects into consideration. The inflection point of the EKC curve was located at electrification level of 10.81% and 10.52% respectively with and without considering the spatial factor. Since 2016, the electrification level of all the studied provinces in China was on the right side of the EKC inflection point, which means the improvement of electrification levels will result in future reduction of carbon intensity. Suggestions for promoting electrification in China were proposed at the end.