ZHANG Chenji    School of Economics

Abstract：Since the reform and opening up, China's economy has made remarkable achievements after more than 30 years of development. However, with the rapid economic growth, the problem of environmental pollution has become increasingly prominent. The extensive mode of economic development in the past has brought us serious environmental pollution. Due to China's large population, small per capita resources, and extensive economic development over the years, which consumes a lot of energy, it is bound to face severe energy security problems in the future. Therefore, it is urgent for China to develop a low-carbon economy from the perspective of seeking its own sustainable development or fulfilling the responsibility of energy conservation and emission reduction as a major country. However, in order to achieve the development goal of low-carbon economy, enterprises do not have strong willingness to actively invest in technological innovation, which requires the government to guide enterprises, institutionally require enterprises to meet the production technology standards for environmental protection formulated by the government, and the government needs to formulate regulatory policies for environmental protection to achieve the policy purpose of promoting enterprises' low-carbon technological innovation through environmental regulation. This paper first expounds the basic theories of low-carbon economy and environmental regulation and the connotation of low-carbon technology innovation, and analyzes the impact mechanism of environmental regulation on low-carbon technology innovation. The paper also empirically analyzes the impact of environmental regulation on low-carbon technology innovation by using provincial panel data. The conclusion is that the impact of environmental regulation on low-carbon technology innovation is inverted U-shaped. With the strengthening of environmental regulation, it has a positive impact on low-carbon technology innovation, and then a negative impact. The higher the level of economic development and the larger the scale of enterprises, the more conducive to promoting low-carbon technological innovation; China's current investment in science and technology capital and science and technology personnel can not significantly promote low-carbon technology innovation. Therefore, this paper believes that continuous improvement of China's environmental protection regulatory institutions and facilities, improvement of China's scientific research investment mode, shift from state-led to enterprise-led, increase special investment in low-carbon technology innovation, and implement appropriate environmental regulatory policies can promote low-carbon technology innovation and low-carbon economic development.

Read the article here:      【环境保护】环境规制对低碳技术创新的影响研究.pdf