Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- Index system, method, and application of natural resources evaluation -- Efficiency evaluation of energy and resource utilization at the regional level in China -- Spatial differences in water–energy system coupling relationship -- Study on the economic effects of efficient utilization of natural resources -- Research on environmental effects of natural resources efficiency utilization -- Analysis of temporal and spatial evolution of natural resources utilization -- Price fluctuation of natural resources and its impacts on economic development -- Research on policy support system and supervision mechanism of natural resources efficiency utilization.

AbstractReducing carbon intensity (CI) is one of the core steps of climate change mitigation. This study emphasized the roles of ecological services and regional heterogeneity in determining CI. We considered heterogeneities based on geography and income and explored the roles of net primary productivity (NPP)‐based carbon footprint and CI in the changes in China's CI over 2001−2015 using an extended production‐theoretical decomposition analysis and matching the socio‐economic data sets with NPP data from a remote sensing satellite. We found that group technological change, reflecting the effect of shrinkage or expansion of the group best practice frontier, and the potential NPP‐based carbon footprint, reflecting the impact of energy‐related CO2 emissions on ecological carbon absorption, are the most significant factors accounting for the increase and decrease in CI, respectively, while NPP‐based CI generally accounts for the decline in CI. We further showed that the technology gap change exhibited by an invert U‐shaped curve contributed to the increase in CI under geography‐based heterogeneity. We advise that China's policies should be more focused on ecological factors and regional heterogeneity in regions with abundant NPP (e.g., Yunnan and Sichuan) to further reduce CI.

Air pollution control is crucial for promoting the modernization of governance systems and efficiency. To address the subjective contrived factors and errors in the gross domestic product (GDP) data in traditional statistical almanacs, our study aims to construct a panel data model of 287 prefecture-level cities for the period from 1998–2016 (using objective nighttime light data). We also used government work report words related to environmental regulation to characterize the constraints of government environmental regulations. For this purpose, we used instrumental variables (to explore the relationship and interaction between air pollution and economic growth) and a model setting, with which we carried out regression analysis and robustness tests; the findings were validated using a transmission mechanism hypothesis. We found that that economic growth and air pollution positively influence each other and government environmental regulations significantly reduce air pollution. We also found that to achieve high economic development, environmental pollution must be controlled to avoid further damage to human and material capital. Furthermore, government environmental regulations can help improve the environmental comfort level and economic development quality. First published online 7 June 2021