Would environmental regulation improve the greenhouse gas benefits of natural gas use? A Chinese case study

By Jun Zhao, Qingzhe Jiang, Xiucheng Dong, Kangyin Dong. 2020

192 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Along with rapidly increasing natural gas consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and the gradually strengthening environmental regulation, further investigation of the emission-natural gas-environmental regulation nexus in China is particularly useful for mitigating the country's CO2 emissions. To empirically investigate whether environmental regulation improves the greenhouse gas benefits of natural gas use in China, this study investigates the causal relationships among CO2 emissions, natural gas consumption, and environmental regulation in China, based on panel data of China's 30 provinces covering 2005–2015. Fully considering the potential cross-sectional dependence, the system general method of moments (SYS-GMM) estimation method is utilized. The empirical results reveal that: (1) Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for CO2 emissions is valid in China; (2) environmental regulation will not only directly affect CO2 emissions, but also indirectly affect CO2 emissions by influencing the energy consumption structure; (3) environmental regulation cannot significantly improve the greenhouse gas benefits of natural gas use, as environmental regulation in China can indirectly reduce CO2 emissions by decreasing coal consumption rather than increasing natural gas consumption; and (4) the causality analysis for three regions confirms the existence of significant regional differences. These findings offer several targeted policies for reducing CO2 emissions and promoting growth in the natural gas industry in China.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d5c92a9f654e5979096198f57e13e23275d3ee79

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Muntasir Murshed
2. Zeeshan Khan
3. Nazim Hussain
4. Mahmood Ahmad
5. Kangyin Dong
6. Husam Rjoub
7. Siqun Yang
8. Zahoor Ahmed

In Environmental Engineering

1. Muntasir Murshed
2. Husam Rjoub
3. Nazim Hussain
4. Zeeshan Khan
5. Mahmood Ahmad
6. Kangyin Dong
7. Zahoor Ahmed

In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

1. Zeeshan Khan
2. Zahoor Ahmed
3. Muntasir Murshed

Citations in the corpus

• Economic growth, renewable energy consumption, and ecological footprint: Exploring the role of environmental regulations and democracy in sustainable development (2021, background): “Relaxed environmental regulations also tend to promote pollution-intensive industries in the host country (Fotis & Polemis, 2018; Zhao et al., 2020).”
• The roles of export diversification and composite country risks in carbon emissions abatement: evidence from the signatories of the regional comprehensive economic partnership agreement (2021, background): “While a large body of literature has investigated the relationship between CO2 emissions and their associated determinants (Dong et al. 2018; Tian et al. 2019; Zhao et al. 2020), very few studies have examined the main determinants of CO2 emissions in the context of the RCEP countries, which represe”