Designing a circular carbon and plastics economy for a sustainable future.

The linear production and consumption of plastics today is unsustainable. It creates large amounts of unnecessary and mismanaged waste, pollution and carbon dioxide emissions, undermining global climate targets and the Sustainable Development Goals. This Perspective provides an integrated technological, economic and legal view on how to deliver a circular carbon and plastics economy that minimizes carbon dioxide emissions. Different pathways that maximize recirculation of carbon (dioxide) between plastics waste and feedstocks are outlined, including mechanical, chemical and biological recycling, and those involving the use of biomass and carbon dioxide. Four future scenarios are described, only one of which achieves sufficient greenhouse gas savings in line with global climate targets. Such a bold system change requires 50% reduction in future plastic demand, complete phase-out of fossil-derived plastics, 95% recycling rates of retrievable plastics and use of renewable energy. It is hard to overstate the challenge of achieving this goal. We therefore present a roadmap outlining the scale and timing of the economic and legal interventions that could possibly support this. Assessing the service lifespan and recoverability of plastic products, along with considerations of sufficiency and smart design, can moreover provide design principles to guide future manufacturing, use and disposal of plastics.

Can the digital economy development achieve the effect of pollution reduction? Evidence from Chinese Cities.

As a new economic form, the digital economy is not only empowering new impetus to economic growth, but also reshaping specific business forms of economical operation. Therefore, we conducted an empirical test to verify the impact and mechanism of pollution reduction in the digital economy, based on the panel data of 280 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2019. The results show that, first the development of the digital economy indeed has the positive effect of realizing pollution reduction. The results of mediating effect test indicate the influence mechanism mainly rely on promoting the upgrading of industrial structure (structural effect) and upgrading the level of green technology innovation (technical effect). Second, the results of regional heterogeneity analysis show that the emission reduction effect of digital economy development on four pollutants is characterized by weakness in the east and strong in the west in regional distribution. Third, the development of digital economy has a threshold effect on the level of economic development to achieve its pollution reduction effect. Further identification of the threshold effect indicates that the higher the level of economic development, the better in emission reduction effect.

The impact of bank's engagement in shadow banking activities on bank's sustainability: Evidence from Chinese commercial banks.

The economic and environmental consequences of bad banking practices have aroused much attention. In China, banks are at the center of shadow banking activities through which they avoid regulation and support environmentally unfriendly businesses such as fossil fuel companies and other high-pollution enterprises. In this paper, we study the impact of bank's engagement in shadow banking activities on its sustainability by using annual panel data of Chinese commercial banks. The result shows that bank's engagement in shadow banking activities has a negative impact on its sustainability and the negative impact of bank's engagement in shadow banking activities is more pronounced for city commercial banks and unlisted banks which are less regulated and lack corporate social responsibility (CSR). Furthermore, we explore the underlying mechanism of our findings and prove that bank's sustainability is impeded because it transforms high-risk loan into shadow banking activities which are less regulated. Finally, by using difference-in-difference (DiD) approach, we find that bank's sustainability improved after the financial regulation on shadow banking activities. Our research provides empirical evidence that the financial regulation on bad banking practices is beneficial for bank's sustainability.

The evolution and determinants of Chinese inter-provincial green development efficiency: an MCSE-DEA-Tobit-based perspective.

Continuous and rapid economic development has brought about excessive resource consumption and environmental pollution. Therefore, it is particularly essential to coordinate economic, resource, and environmental factors to achieve sustainable development. This paper develops a new data envelopment analysis (DEA) method that can be used for multi-level complex system evaluation (MCSE-DEA) to reveal the inter-provincial green development efficiency (GDE) in China from 2010 to 2018. Moreover, the Tobit model is applied to explore the influencing factors of GDE. We found that (i) the MCSE-DEA model tends to have lower efficiency scores than the traditional P-DEA (panel data envelopment analysis) model, and the top three provinces are Shanghai, Tianjin, and Fujian; (ii) the efficiency shows an increasing trend during the whole study period. The southeast region and the Middle Yangtze River region have the highest efficiency values, reaching 1.09, while the northwest region ranks last with an average efficiency value of 0.66. Shanghai performs the best, while Ningxia performs the worst, with efficiency values of 1.43 and 0.58, respectively; (iii) the provinces with lower efficiency values mainly come from economically underdeveloped remote regions, which can be attributed to issues of water consumption (WC) and energy consumption (EC). Moreover, there are much room for improvement in solid waste emissions (SW) and soot and industrial dust emissions (SD); (iv) the environmental investment, R&D investment, and economic development level can significantly improve GDE, while industrial structure, urbanization level, and energy consumption have inhibiting effects.

Cost-effective mitigation of nitrogen pollution from global croplands.

Cropland is a main source of global nitrogen pollution1,2. Mitigating nitrogen pollution from global croplands is a grand challenge because of the nature of non-point-source pollution from millions of farms and the constraints to implementing pollution-reduction measures, such as lack of financial resources and limited nitrogen-management knowledge of farmers3. Here we synthesize 1,521 field observations worldwide and identify 11 key measures that can reduce nitrogen losses from croplands to air and water by 30-70%, while increasing crop yield and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) by 10-30% and 10-80%, respectively. Overall, adoption of this package of measures on global croplands would allow the production of 17 ± 3 Tg (1012 g) more crop nitrogen (20% increase) with 22 ± 4 Tg less nitrogen fertilizer used (21% reduction) and 26 ± 5 Tg less nitrogen pollution (32% reduction) to the environment for the considered base year of 2015. These changes could gain a global societal benefit of 476 ± 123 billion US dollars (USD) for food supply, human health, ecosystems and climate, with net mitigation costs of only 19 ± 5 billion USD, of which 15 ± 4 billion USD fertilizer saving offsets 44% of the gross mitigation cost. To mitigate nitrogen pollution from croplands in the future, innovative policies such as a nitrogen credit system (NCS) could be implemented to select, incentivize and, where necessary, subsidize the adoption of these measures.

The impact of local government debt on urban environmental pollution and its mechanism: Evidence from China.

As an important financial means for governments to improve the quality of economic development, government debt greatly affects the quality of local environmental governance. Based on a theoretical mechanism analysis that uses the pollutant emissions panel data and new caliber urban investment bond data of 273 cities in China, this paper empirically tests the impact of local government debt on urban emission reduction and the mechanism that drives this impact. We find that local government debt significantly promotes urban emissions reduction, and as urban pollution becomes more aggravated, this promoting effect has a dynamic path, first strengthening and then weakening. The role of local government debt in promoting urban emission reduction is characterized by both temporal and spatial heterogeneity. A mechanistic analysis shows that local government debt can promote urban emission reduction by promoting urban environmental innovation, with green invention patents demonstrating a stronger intermediary role than green utility model patents.

Environmental and economic cost-benefit comparison of sponge city construction in different urban functional regions.

This study conducts a life cycle environmental and economic quantification comparison of urban runoff source control facilities (URSCFs) through construction and operation stages in two urban functional regions (i.e., residential area and campus). From the environmental perspective, URSCFs construction in residential area has both higher environmental impacts and benefits than that in campus. The operation stage of URSCFs can observe significant benefit for both residential area and campus. We then develop a set of monetized method to make a comprehensive benefit evaluation (i.e., environmental, economic, and social benefit) of URSCFs. Overall, the two areas have payback time less than thirteen years for their investment which is acceptable when compared with the assumed total service period (30 years). Specifically, the payback time of campus is 5.62 years and residential area is 12.44 years. This implies that the campus has great potential to achieve high cost-benefit ratio and thus the Sponge City construction in campus can implement URSCFs with less engineering and material consumption due to its more spacious site than residential area with high building density. For both residential area and campus, permeable pavement has the highest environmental impact and economic cost because of the concrete consumption. Thus, we recommend that it should be cautious of the construction of concrete permeable pavement and find environmentally and economically alternatives in future URSCFs projects.

Green credit, environmental protection investment and debt financing for heavily polluting enterprises.

The paper takes listed companies in the heavily polluting industry from 2009-2017 as a research sample to explore whether heavy pollution enterprises' environmental protection investment helps their debt financing under the institutional background of China's continuous implementation of green credit policy. It is found that, in general, the environmental protection investment of heavy pollution enterprises helps them to obtain more and relatively long-term new loans; in terms of time, this effect is more evident after the release of China's Green Credit Guidelines in 2012; in addition, the level of regional environmental pollution, the level of financial development and the green fiscal policy also have a moderating effect on this. This paper enriches the study of the economic consequences of corporate environmental protection investment from the perspective of debt financing. It examines the effects of the implementation of China's green credit policy and other institutional factors to provide a reference for the heavy pollution enterprises' environmental protection investment and the implementation of green credit policy by local governments in China.

The effects of the environmental protection tax law on heavily polluting firms in China.

In 2016, China implemented an environmental protection tax (EPTL2016) to promote the transformation and upgrading of heavily polluting industries through tax leverage. Using panel data of China's listed companies, this study assesses the treatment effects of the EPTL2016 on the transformation and upgrading of heavily polluting firms by incorporating the intermediary role of the financial market. The empirical findings show that the EPTL2016 significantly reduced the innovation investment and productivity of heavily polluting firms but had no significant effect on fixed-asset investment. Additionally, EPTL2016 reduced the supply of bank loans to heavily polluting firms and increased the value of growth options for private enterprises and the efficiency of the supply of long-term loans to heavily polluting firms. Although the environmental policy of EPTL2016 benefits the transformation and upgrading of heavily polluting industries in many aspects, it generally hinders the industrial upgrading because of the reduction of bank loans.

Discretionary Effort on Green Technology Innovation: How Chinese Enterprises Act when Facing Financing Constraints.

Firm's effort on Green technology innovation (hereafter, called G-innovation) is affected by financing constraints, and firm will make a discretionary choice according to its own situation, to achieve the maximization of self-interests. Based on the data of Chinese micro enterprises, firstly, we empirically analyze firms' decision-making towards G-innovation when faced with financing constraints. It supports the view that financing constraints can hinder enterprise technological innovation. And we also make an explanation that the social benefits of green technology innovation are greater than personal benefits, which makes enterprises tend to reduce green technology innovation when facing financing constraints. Then we examine firms' heterogonous behaviors under different internal attributes and external environments. The results reveal that: First, firms are reluctant to pay more efforts to G-innovation when faced with increased financing constraints. Second, firms with different attributes exhibit heterogeneous G-innovation. Political connections will change firms' willingness to innovate, while the structure of property rights and the pollution degree will not. Third, firms under different external environment also exhibit heterogeneous G-innovation. When economic policy uncertainty increases, firms' willingness to innovate weakens. The development of shadow banks fail to improve firm's willingness to innovate.

Research and economic perspectives on an integrated biorefinery approach for the simultaneous production of polyhydroxyalkanoates and biohydrogen.

Alarming environmental impacts have been resulted across the globe due to the recovery and consumption of fossil fuels. The elevated global carbon footprint has paved the way to an alternative to combat the prevalent pollution. On the other hand, the fossil-based plastics produced from the byproducts of petroleum remain intact in the environment leading to pollution. Fossil abated bioproducts are in high demand due to the increase in pollution. This call to utilize feedstock for simultaneous production of biologically useful products through carbon capture utilisation where the leftover carbon-rich substrate is converted into usable chemicals like bioplastics, methanol, urea and various other industrially essential components. The present review extensively focuses on the research and economic perspectives of an integrated biorefinery and addresses technical breaches, bottlenecks, and efficient strategies for the simultaneous production of biohydrogen and polyhydroxyalkanoates.

The impact of economic and political reforms on environmental performance in developing countries.

The humans of modern society are enjoying the luxuries and comforts today but future generations will be facing a more polluted environment and scarcity of natural resources. So the effects of global warming and climatic changes are a major policy concern nowadays around the world. The majority of the literature treats the Carbon Dioxide emissions as an indicator of environmental deterioration but this paper considers the environmental performance index as an indicator of environment. This paper addresses the role of institutional reforms for environmental performance that is hardly discussed in the earlier literature. It is argued that a novel approach of institutional reforms can provide some useful insights for environmental performance in developing countries. There is wide agreement that institutional quality is crucial for economic sustainability but rarely focused to explore the impacts of institutional reforms on environmental performance. The institutional reforms are generally divided into two categories; economic and political reforms. This paper investigated the impact of each category of institutional reforms for environmental performance by using panel data of 122 developing economies for a period of 1996-2020. Difference in differences technique is applied to determine the impact of each category of reforms on the environment. It is found that economic and political reforms significantly contribute to protecting the environment in developing countries, and it will be a good policy option to reform the economic and political institutions to preserve the environment in these countries along with sustainable development.

The effects on mortality and the associated financial costs of wood heater pollution in a regional Australian city.

OBJECTIVES: To estimate the annual burden of mortality and the associated health costs attributable to air pollution from wood heaters in Armidale. DESIGN: Health impact assessment (excess annual mortality and financial costs) based upon atmospheric PM2.5 measurements. SETTING: Armidale, a regional Australian city (population, 24 504) with high levels of air pollution in winter caused by domestic wood heaters, 1 May 2018 - 30 April 2019. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Estimated population exposure to PM2.5 from wood heaters; estimated numbers of premature deaths and years of life lost. RESULTS: Fourteen premature deaths (95% CI, 12-17 deaths) per year, corresponding to 210 (95% CI, 172-249) years of life lost, are attributable to long term exposure to wood heater PM2.5 pollution in Armidale. The estimated financial cost is $32.8 million (95% CI, $27.0-38.5 million), or $10 930 (95% CI, $9004-12 822) per wood heater per year. CONCLUSIONS: The substantial mortality and financial cost attributable to wood heating in Armidale indicates that effective policies are needed to reduce wood heater pollution, including public education about the effects of wood smoke on health, subsidies that encourage residents to switch to less polluting home heating (perhaps as part of an economic recovery package), assistance for those affected by wood smoke from other people, and regulations that reduce wood heater use (eg, by not permitting new wood heaters and requiring existing units to be removed when houses are sold).

Sustainability assessment and improvement strategies research for typical arid and resource-developing regions.

Located in the Eurasian continent's hinterland, Xinjiang is a typical arid and resource-developing region in China's northwest. Problems such as excessive resource consumption, environmental pollution, and ecological imbalance are becoming severe, which have become the bottleneck that further restricts Xinjiang's sustainable development. Due to its outstanding quantitative advantages, ecological efficiency has become a significant indicator and analytical tool for measuring the green economy and sustainable development. In this study, we analyzed ecological efficiency variation for Xinjiang's 14 prefectures between 2001 and 2015 using a super-efficient data envelopment model (DEA), Malmquist Index, and Tobit model. These analyses indicated that: (1) The overall ecological efficiency level of Xinjiang is low, and development among regions is unbalanced, out of sync, lacks sustainability. (2) From 2001 to 2015, Xinjiang's ecological efficiency showed a W-shaped rising trend and finally increased by 5.7%. It is due to the substantial improvement in environmental efficiency. (3) By analyzing the environmental efficiency and resource efficiency, 14 prefectures in Xinjiang consist of four development modes: low energy consumption and low emission, high energy consumption and low emission, low energy consumption and high emission, and high energy consumption and high emission. (4) Water resources are restricting factors of arid regions. In most prefectures, there exist excessive water resource investment, excessive COD, and NH3-N emissions. (5) By analyzing the Malmquist index, it shows that the technical progress index(TC) restricted ecological efficiency. In contrast, the technical efficiency index (EC) promoted ecological efficiency.(6)The ecological efficiency was positively correlated with the utilization of foreign capital, urbanization rate, and average education degree but negatively correlated with the marketization degree. The study has guidance and reference function for the sustainable development of Xinjiang-a vital corridor of the Silk Road Economic Belt, and also provides a reference to the research work of other arid resource-based regions.

How environmental regulation affects China's rare earth export?

China's rare earth export trade has developed so rapidly since 1990s that China has gradually occupied a leading position in the international market. However, this fast development was proceeding at the cost of the rare earth energy consumption and environmental devastation. Now China begins to attach great importance to environmental protection, which attracts many researchers. This study aims to analyze the influence of environmental regulation on China's rare earth export trade. And the original study is amongst the few to examine the relationship between environmental regulation and China's rare earth export with the product-level data. Different from previous studies, this paper selects China's rare earth export data from 1995 to 2015 and introduces product heterogeneity based on the rare earth production process. Moreover, this study uses the entropy weight method to measure the intensity of environmental regulation. The core conclusions are as follows: (1) Environmental regulation significantly promotes rather than restrains China's rare earth export. (2) According to the rare earth production process, this paper divides rare earth products into 3 kinds, that is, rare earth raw materials, rare earth useful components and rare earth end-use applications. Then, it is found that rare earth useful component export in processing and smelting is positively affected by environmental regulation. Rare earth raw materials and end-use applications in China's export are hardly affected. (3) Technological innovation has a mediating effect on the impact mechanism of environmental regulation on China's rare earth export, which means that environmental regulation significantly promotes technological innovation of enterprises, and thereby the rare earth export is increased. The findings are helpful for policymakers to resolve the issue of environmental devastation.

Effect of PM2.5 pollution on perinatal mortality in China.

Using ArcGIS to analyze satellite derived PM2.5 estimates, this paper obtains the average concentration and maximum concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in China's 31 provinces from 2002 to 2015. We adopt fixed effects model and spatial Durbin model to investigate the association between PM2.5 and perinatal mortality rates. The results indicate that PM2.5 has a significantly positive association with perinatal mortality rates. A 1% increase of log-transformed average concentration and maximum concentrations of PM2.5 is associated with 1.76‰ and 2.31‰ increase of perinatal mortality rates, respectively. In spatial econometrics analysis, we find PM2.5 has significant spatial autocorrelation characteristics. The concentrations of log-transformed average and maximum PM2.5 increase 1% is associated with a 2.49% increase in a 2.49‰ and 2.19‰ increase of perinatal mortality rates, respectively. The potential mechanism is that air pollution has an impact on infant weight to impact perinatal mortality rates.

Analyzing the farmers' pro-environmental behavior intention and their rural tourism livelihood in tourist village where its ecological environment is polluted.

This study examines farmers' intentions towards pro-environmental behavior in a famous tourist village in China called Guanshan, whose ecological environment is polluted. By adopting the empirically validated norm activation model (NAM) of Schwartz and merging it with Vroom's expectancy theory, the current research aims to develop a refined framework for understanding the formation of and predicting changes in pro-environmental intention. Field surveys were conducted in Guanshan, which resulted in sample data consisting of 275 valid responses collected by the research team. We develop a refined model, including six latent variables and 24 observational items. The structural equation modeling results show that the final model enjoys a better predictive accuracy of pro-environmental intention than does the original NAM. The study also discovers that the motivational force of expectancy theory significantly influences pro-environmental intention, whose motivational force comes from the impact of valence and expectancy. The pro-environmental intentions of farmers are mainly affected by the environmental personal norm and by a certain degree of personal expectancy. The improvement of farmers' pro-environmental intention needs be promoted in two approaches: the cultivation of personal environmental protection norms and the guidance of producing a desired expectation for pro-environmental intention.

Fiscal Expenditures on Science and Technology and Environmental Pollution: Evidence from China.

Studying the driving factors of environmental pollution is of great importance for China. Previous literature mainly focused on the cause of national aggregate emission changes. However, research about the effect of fiscal expenditures on science and technology (FESTs) on environmental pollution is rare. Considering the large gap among cities in China, it is necessary to investigate whether and how FESTs affect environmental pollution among cities. We adopted three kinds of typical environmental pollutants including sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, wastewater emission, and atmospheric particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5). Using the data of 260 prefecture-level cities over ten years in China, we found that FESTs play a significantly positive role in reducing sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions and PM2.5 concentrations, but fail to alleviate wastewater emissions. Specifically, for every 1% increase in FESTs, SO2 emissions were reduced by 5.317% and PM2.5 concentrations were reduced by 5.329%. Furthermore, we found that FESTs reduced environmental pollution by impeding fixed asset investments and by promoting research and development activities (R&D). Moreover, the impacts of FESTs on environmental pollution varied across regions and sub-periods. Our results are robust to a series of additional checks, including alternative econometric specifications, generalized method of moments (GMM) analysis and overcoming potential endogeneity with an instrumental variable. Our findings confirm that government efforts can be effective on pollution control in China. Hence, all governments should pay more attention to FESTs for sustainable development and environmental quality improvements.

Energy carbon emission structure and reduction potential focused on the supply-side and demand-side.

In recent years, the environmental problems caused by excessive carbon emissions from energy sources have become increasingly serious, which not only aggravates the climate change caused by the greenhouse effect but also seriously restricts the sustainable development of Chinese economy. An attempt is made in this paper to use energy consumption method and input-output method to study the carbon emission structure of China's energy system and industry in 2015 from two perspectives, namely China's energy supply side and energy demand side, by taking into account the two factors of energy invest in gross capital formation and export. The results show that neglecting these two factors will lead to underestimation of intermediate use carbon emissions and overestimation of final use carbon emissions. On energy supply side, the carbon emission structure of China's energy system is still dominated by high-carbon energy (raw coal, coke, diesel, and fuel oil, etc.), accounting for more than 70% of total energy carbon emissions; on the contrary, the natural gas such as clean energy accounts for only 3.45% of total energy carbon emissions, indicating that the energy consumption structure optimization and emission reduction gap of China's energy supply side are still substantial. On energy demand side, the final use (direct consumption by residents and government) produces less carbon emissions, while the intermediate use (production by enterprises) produces more than 90% of the total energy carbon emissions. Fossil energy, power sector, heavy industry, chemical industry, and transportation belong to industries with larger carbon emissions and lower carbon emission efficiency, while agriculture, construction, light industry, and service belong to industries with fewer carbon emissions and higher carbon emission efficiency. This means that the optimization of industrial structure is conducive to slowing down the growth of energy carbon emissions on the demand side.