Study On The Effect Of Carbon Intensity Target Policy On Green Total Factor Productivity Of Coal-fired Power Plants In China

China has made great achievements in the process of reform and opening up for more than 40 years,but it has also brought about increasingly serious environmental problems.In the new era,green sustainable development and high-quality development have become the main keynote.Green development emphasizes the coordination and sustainability between economic development and the ecological environment.The transition to a green intensive development mode actually requires the improvement of green total factor productivity.In order to control pollutant emissions and promote the transition to a lowcarbon economy,the Chinese government has adopted a series of energy-saving and emission-reduction measures.To test whether or not environmental regulation can improve the productivity growth and carbon abatement is important for a country to develop sustainably.This paper studies how carbon intensity target policy（CITP）that the Chinese government initiated in 12 th Five-Year Plan（FYP）influence the green productivity of coalfired power plants（CPPs）,using panel data from China’s CPPs during the period from 2005 to 2015（between the 11 th and 12 th Five-Year Plan）.Firstly,we propose Biennial Metafrontier Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index（BMML）for measuring dynamic changes in green productivity and its decomposition index over time.Furthermore,regarding the CITP proposed during 12 th FYP as a natural experiment,we estimate the impact of this policy on green productivity of China’s CPPs by adopting the difference-indifferences-in-differences（DDD）method,analyze the heterogeneity and mechanism of the policy effect,and investigate robustness of the measurement results through a series of tests.The results indicate that the growth rate of green productivity of CPPs in our country during the 11 th Five-Year and 12 th Five-Year Plan period shows an upward trend.The analysis of heterogeneity is divided into groups,both high-capacity（HC）group and the low-capacity（LC）,the state-owned group and the local group show has an increasing trend of green productivity.The CIRP has significantly promoted the increase of green productivity in China’s CPPs,increase in efficiency change（EC）is the vital driver of enhancing the green productivity,which validates the Porter hypothesis.However,it also caused the deterioration of best practice change（BPC）to a certain extent,and restrained the increase of green productivity to a certain extent.Empirical results are practical for the optimization and upgrading of CPPs industrial structure,green transformation of economy,and the further effective reform of environmental regulations.