Research On The Impact Of Environmental Regulation And Industrial Structure Upgrading On Carbon Emissions

China’s traditional brown economy development model has led to a sharp increase in energy consumption and carbon emissions,placing a large burden on resources and environmental carrying capacity.Since the 21st century,global carbon emissions have grown rapidly,with a growth rate of over 40%.According to data published by the International Energy Agency(IEA),global carbon dioxide emissions will reach 36.3 billion tons by 2021,another record high and an increase of 6% compared to 34.36 billion tons in 2019.Under the dual pressure of environmental degradation and resource constraints,carbon emission reduction is imperative.Actively advocating and implementing the new concept of green and low-carbon development,and adhering to the civilizational development path that unifies production development and good ecology is an important way to achieve sustainable development.At the same time,it is also necessary to explore and promote sustainable green development and lifestyles to solve the current ecological and environmental degradation problems.Existing research has found that both environmental regulation and industrial structure upgrading can promote carbon emissions reduction,but existing literature mostly focuses on the impact of the two on carbon emissions separately.There is relatively little discussion on how the interaction between the two affects carbon emissions.However,a comprehensive and in-depth exploration of the internal mechanism of environmental regulation and industrial structure upgrading on carbon emissions is of great practical significance for China to solve the problem of carbon emissions.The study selects panel data of 30 provinces(municipalities and autonomous regions)in China from 2000 to 2020,excluding Tibet,and systematically analyzes the effects of environmental regulations and industrial structure upgrading on carbon emissions in China as a whole and in the eastern,central and western regions,and whether there are other paths of action in the process,using the benchmark regression model,moderating effect model and panel threshold model.The study finds that there is a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental regulations and carbon emissions in China as a whole and in the western region,and environmental regulations in the eastern region can effectively suppress carbon emissions,while environmental regulations in the central region promote carbon emissions;and the upgrading of industrial structure in the whole country and in each region can effectively suppress carbon emissions.The regression results with the level of industrial structure upgrading as the moderating variable show that the industrial structure upgrading in both national and central and western regions can positively regulate the relationship between environmental regulations and carbon emissions,while the industrial structure upgrading in the eastern region cannot regulate the relationship between environmental regulations and carbon emissions.The panel threshold regression results with the level of industrial structure upgrading as the threshold variable show that there is a threshold effect of industrial structure upgrading on the regulation of environmental regulations and carbon emissions.The moderating effect is positive when the level of industrial structure upgrading is low,and gradually changes to negative as the level of industrial structure upgrading increases.