The Influence Of Environmental Regulation On Green Development Of Thermal Power Enterprises

Being an important source of power in China,thermal power is highly critical to national energy security.China has been persistently promoting eco-civilization,which calls for solid progress since the 19 th CPC National Congress.Under the circumstances of tighter resource capacity constraints in China,the transition of economic growth mode of thermal power enterprises has become an increasingly pressing issue.This study tests the Porter hypothesis in power enterprises regulated by China`s environmental policies and aims to explore the influence mechanism.Based on firm level data of China’s listed thermal power enterprises from 2009 to 2018,this paper measures the Green Total Factor Productivity of listed thermal power enterprises using ML productivity index based on SBM directional distance function.By applying systematic dynamic panel GMM Model,this paper analyses the influence mechanism of environmental regulation on GTFP of China’s thermal power listed companies,investigating direct and moderating effect considering company heterogeneity arisen from different regions,scales and ownerships,in order to build up a long-term green development mechanism for thermal power enterprises.The research finds that:(1)environmental regulation exerts an U-shaped effect on GTFP of thermal power listed companies,which shows an inhibiting effect at first,followed by a promoting effect only after the critical point,while current environmental regulation imposed on majority of companies are on the left side of the U-curve;(2)both technological innovation and energy structure have a U-shaped moderating effect on the relationship between environmental regulation and GTFP of listed thermal power enterprises.Firstly,moderating effect of technological innovation is featured with company heterogeneity.In terms of regions where companies are located,the moderating effect of technological innovation for companies in central and western inland areas is greater than that in southeast coastal areas.In terms of company scale,technological innovation exerts a significant U-shaped moderating effect in large-scale companies,but shows a non-significant moderating effect in small and medium ones.When categorized by ownership,technological innovation of state-owned enterprises has a significant U-shaped moderating effect on GTFP,while impact of technological innovation on GTFP for non-state-owned enterprises is not statistically significant.Secondly,empirical results in three subsamples indicate that energy structure is characterized with significant moderating effect on the relationship between environmental regulation and GTFP of thermal power enterprises.Energy structure of companies in central and western inland areas shows a greater moderating effect than that in southeast coastal areas.Small and medium sized enterprises exert a more significant moderating effect driven by energy structure than large-scale companies.For enterprises in different enterprise ownership categories,results show that there is no distinctive difference in the U-shaped moderating effect of energy structure on GTFP between state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises.Therefore,the government should initiate prudent and appropriate environmental policies to regulate thermal power enterprises,and continue to facilitate technology innovation on state level.Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises,bettering business environment is quite essential.The government should also vigorously support the development of clean energy industry and improvement of energy conversion technology,to promote upgrading and green development of thermal power enterprises.