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The impact of environmental regulation on renewable energy development in China from the perspective of spatial effects

  • Green Development and Environmental Policy in China: Past, Current and Future
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Abstract

From a spatial perspective, this paper constructs a spatial Durbin model based on the adjacent weight matrix to analyze the impact of environmental regulation on the development of renewable energy in 30 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) in China from 2007 to 2020. The results show that (1) both environmental regulation and renewable energy development have positive spatial autocorrelation and form relatively similar spatial agglomeration areas, specifically showing the characteristics of “high-high” agglomeration in resource-rich areas and “low-low” agglomeration in resource-scarce areas. (2) Environmental regulation significantly promotes the development of local renewable energy and has a significant spatial spillover effect on the development of renewable energy in neighboring provinces. (3) The moderating effect results show that renewable energy installed capacity and electricity demand play an inverse moderating role between environmental regulation and renewable energy development. (4) From the perspective of different regions, the impact of environmental regulation on the development of renewable energy is heterogeneous. Based on the research conclusions, this paper finally provides corresponding policy suggestions from three aspects: regional cooperation, technical support, and differentiation.

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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work is partially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2020JJ5111) and Youth Innovation Driven Project of Hunan University of Technology and Business (19QD04). This work is supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (21FJYB012), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M690971), Scientific Research Project of Hunan Education Department (21B0576), Project of Hunan Social Science Achievement Appraisal Committee (XSP20YBZ081), and Graduate Research and Innovation Project of Hunan Province (CX20221146).

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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by DXY, AYT, and ZYL. The first draft of the manuscript was written by LT, and the translation was written by QGW. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lin Tan.

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Yang, D., Tan, L., Wu, Q. et al. The impact of environmental regulation on renewable energy development in China from the perspective of spatial effects. Environ Sci Pollut Res 31, 10234–10249 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30237-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30237-w

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