Analysis Of Pollution Reduction Effects In Low Carbon Pilot Cities

China’s rapid economic development has been accompanied by a series of environmental problems,among which air pollution is the most significant.The Chinese government is aware of the huge threat posed by air pollution and has introduced a series of policies and regulations related to air pollution in recent years.In order to accelerate the process of greening cities and reducing carbon emissions,and to bring them in line with the overall trend of reducing carbon emissions and environmental development in the global economy,China launched its first low-carbon city pilot policy in 2010.Six provinces and 81 prefecture-level cities have been listed as low-carbon pilot cities.In this context,this paper focuses on the practice of low-carbon pilot policies and explores the impact of low-carbon pilot policies on urban pollution reduction effects.Specifically,this paper examines the effect of low-carbon city pilot establishment on the urban pollution reduction effect by using a double difference model with balanced panel data of 281prefecture-level cities in China from 2006-2019.The differences in the impact effects due to inter-city heterogeneity are examined in two dimensions: location and scale.Further,the spillover effect of the policy is considered to examine the impact of the pilot low-carbon city policy on the pollution level of neighboring cities.The study found that:(1)the low-carbon pilot policy significantly contributed to the level of pollution reduction in the pilot cities,reducing total emissions by 19 percentage points,per capita emissions by 17.3percentage points,total industrial wastewater emissions by 12.8 percentage points,and per capita industrial wastewater emissions by 10 percentage points compared to the pre-policy period.(2)The low-carbon pilot policy had a negative spillover effect on the pilot surrounding area,causing the pollution level to increase in the pilot surrounding area.(3)Further heterogeneity test results indicate that the effect of low-carbon pilot city policy implementation decreases in the eastern,central,and western regions in order,and the low-carbon pilot city policy has a better enhancing effect on large and medium-sized cities than on small-sized cities.Finally,based on the collection of previous experiences and insights,this paper puts forward four policy recommendations related to the establishment of low-carbon pilot cities in China through the analysis of the current problems in the process of establishing low-carbon pilot cities and the quantitative analysis about the effect of low-carbon city pilot policies on urban pollution reduction.