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Does environment-biased technological progress reduce CO2 emissions in APEC economies? Evidence from fossil and clean energy consumption

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Abstract

Environment-biased technological progress plays a critical role in carbon reduction, while the association among environment-biased technological progress, energy consumption, and carbon emissions has not been paid enough attention. Working with a unique spatial panel dataset of APEC economies spanning the 2000–2017 period, we employed the nonspatial panel model and the spatial panel model to investigate the role of fossil energy (FE) and clean energy (CE) consumption in carbon dioxide (CO2) abatement through environment-biased technological progress (EBTP). We decomposed EBTP into both emission-reducing biased technological progress (ErBTP) and energy-saving biased technological progress (EsBTP). The results show that the direct effect of EBTP on CO2 emissions was significantly negative and that the direct effect of ErBTP was significantly larger than that of EsBTP. EBTP reduced CO2 emissions through CE consumption, whereas it increased CO2 emissions through FE consumption, that is, EBTP had a “backfire effect” on FE consumption. More into detail, ErBTP had a larger effect on CO2 emissions in developing economies, while EsBTP played a more important role in developed economies. Furthermore, the results of the robustness test were consistent with our findings. Finally, several policy options were suggested to reduce CO2 emissions in APEC economies.

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Notes

  1. Data extracted from: http://iefi.mof.gov.cn/pdlb/dbjgzz/201512/t20151209_1604872.html.

  2. The spatial distance in this paper is measured by the linear distance between the capitals of two regions.

  3. Developed economies (group A) include Australia, Canada, Chile, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and the USA. Developing economies (group B) include China, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

Abbreviations

APEC:

Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation

CE:

clean energy

CO2 :

carbon dioxide

EBTP:

environment-biased technological progress

ErBTP:

emission-reducing biased technological progress

EsBTP:

energy-saving biased technological progress

FDI:

foreign direct investment

FE:

fossil energy

FGLS:

feasible generalized least squares

IS:

industrial structure

OLS:

ordinary least squares

PGDP:

GDP per capita

PS:

population structure

SBM:

slacks-based measure

SEM:

spatial error model

SLM:

spatial lag model

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Funding

We are grateful for financial support provided by the China Natural Science Funding (grant number 71673134) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant number NE2018105).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 211106, China

    Guanglei Yang, Donglan Zha, Chaoqun Zhang & Qian Chen

  2. Research Centre for Soft Energy Science, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 211106, China

    Guanglei Yang, Donglan Zha, Chaoqun Zhang & Qian Chen

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  1. Guanglei Yang
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Correspondence to Donglan Zha.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 8 Heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation, and contemporaneous correlations test for nonspatial panel model
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Appendix 2

Table 9 Estimation results of spatial panel models (SLM)
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Yang, G., Zha, D., Zhang, C. et al. Does environment-biased technological progress reduce CO2 emissions in APEC economies? Evidence from fossil and clean energy consumption. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 20984–20999 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-08437-5

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