关键词: 新能源示范城市, 碳减排, 邻地示范效应

Abstract: The new energy demonstration city pilot is an important measure for the government to implement the low-carbon development strategy. It helps to improve the urban energy structure, encourage the development of emerging energy industries and drive the construction of new energy systems. It is of great significance for achieving carbon peak and carbon neutrality. However, research on the impact of new energy demonstration city construction on carbon emission intensity is still rare. In 2014, the National Energy Administration announced the Notice on Publishing the List of New Energy Demonstration Cities (Industrial Parks) (First Batch), which clearly identified 81 cities such as Shenzhen and 8 industrial parks as the first batch of new energy demonstration cities and industrial parks. It is pointed out that the construction of new energy demonstration cities should aim at promoting sustainable development, constantly innovating renewable energy development methods and serving the green, low-carbon and sustainable development of the economy.
This paper takes the implementation of the new energy demonstration city pilot in 2014 as a quasi-natural experiment. Based on the panel data of 278 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2020, this paper systematically examines the carbon emission reduction effect, spatial spillover effect and dynamic heterogeneity mechanism of new energy demonstration city construction by using the difference-in-differences method, spatial econometric model and triple difference model. The research data of this paper mainly comes from China Statistical Yearbook, China City Statistical Yearbook and so on. It is worth noting that the carbon emission scale data is calculated by referring to the China Carbon Emission Accounting Database, and the energy consumption data is calculated by using the DMSP/OLS nighttime light data of each prefecture-level city.
The study finds that the construction of new energy demonstration cities can effectively inhibit urban carbon emission intensity. This conclusion has successfully passed a series of robustness and endogenous tests, such as parallel trend test, placebo test, instrumental variable method test, PSM-DID test, changing the research window period, eliminating the samples of autonomous regions, excluding other policies, eliminating the interference of outliers and controlling the province-time fixed effect. The analysis of spatial spillover effect shows that the new energy demonstration city can not only effectively drive local carbon emission reduction, but also effectively suppress the carbon emission intensity of neighboring areas. The policy has an obvious neighboring demonstration effect. The mechanism test shows that the construction of new energy demonstration cities indirectly achieves urban carbon emission reduction mainly by promoting the development of innovation and entrepreneurship, attracting foreign investment, strengthening government support, increasing investment in science and technology, enhancing energy efficiency and improving the multi-dimensional transmission path of energy structure. Heterogeneity analysis shows that in areas with higher government environmental protection attention and better market-oriented development, the carbon emission reduction effect of new energy demonstration city construction is more obvious. The conclusions of this paper provide some policy implications for the Chinese government to further deepen the pilot of new energy demonstration cities, further promote the energy revolution and achieve the goal of “double carbon”.

Key words: new energy demonstration city, carbon emission reduction, neighborhood demonstration effect