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Towards sustainable development: what carbon trading pilot policy has been done for mitigating carbon emissions and air pollution?

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Abstract

This study examines the impact of carbon trading pilot policy (CTPP) on carbon emissions (CO2) and air pollution (Ap) using the difference in differences method (DID) utilizing panel data from 30 Chinese areas spanning from 2008 to 2020. The results indicate that CTPP implementation can effectively decrease CO2 and Ap. CTPP can reduce CO2 and Ap through positive incentive effects that promote industrial structure upgrading and drive technological progress. Moreover, CTPP exhibits significant regional variation, with CTPP significantly reducing CO2 in both the eastern and central and western regions. CTPP do not show an effective reduction in Ap in eastern region, while effectively reduce Ap in central and western regions.

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  1. Available at: https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2022-05/28/5692799/files/349e930e68794f3287888d8dbe9b3ced.pdf

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Funding

This work was supported by the 2021 Research Programme of Panzhihua Science and Technology Bureau (grant number 2021ZX-5–1); Special Basic Cooperative Research Programs of Yunnan Provincial Undergraduate Universities’ Association (grant numbers 202101AO070272); 2022 Research Programme of Panzhihua Science and Technology Bureau (grant number 2022ZD-S-12; 2022ZD-S-24; 2022ZD-S-26).

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Yige Qiu: Conceptualization, Project administration, Writing—review & editing, Writing—original draft, Software, Visualization, Formal analysis. Mei Zhang: Writing—original draft, Software, Writing—review & editing, Formal analysis. Funding acquisition, Supervision. Shanshan Liu: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing, Formal analysis, Methodology, Data curation, Validation. Mengjie Fan: Writing—review & editing, Validation.

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Correspondence to Shanshan Liu.

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Qiu, Y., Zhang, M., Fan, M. et al. Towards sustainable development: what carbon trading pilot policy has been done for mitigating carbon emissions and air pollution?. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 96678–96688 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29246-6

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