Research On Human Capital Driving Low-carbon Transition Under Resource And Environmental Constraints

Implementation of low-carbon transition development strategy, in the long term, is China’s international responsibility as a big country of energy consumption and carbon emissions. In the near term, it is an inevitable choice to reduce fossil energy dependence and control air pollution emissions synergistically. Particularly, low-carbon transition is important to reduce air pollution and improve air quality for the urgency. China’s economic slowdown into the "new normal", under increasing pressure to transit, research on low-carbon transition driving by human capital has important theoretical and practical significance.Low-carbon transition is rapid economic adjustment process under the current serious situation of resources and environmental problems, and is development path forms and means to achieve a low-carbon economy. The ultimate goal of low-carbon transition is sustainable development, and requirements of low-carbon development can be summarized as low-carbon, energy saving and green. This paper argues that the low carbon transition is defined as:low-carbon transition is an economy transition to achieve carbon emission reduction, energy conservation and green development with the goal and premise of sustainable growth.That combine of human capital theory and endogenous growth theory makes economists a deeper understanding of endogenous growth force. Growth models provide a strong theoretical foundation and tools for the study of low-carbon transition. This paper explored the inherent theory of human capital and low-carbon transition by improving the Solow model, extending endogenous growth models and deriving carbon productivity equation. In this paper, empirical research is based on three low-carbon transition variables about low-carbon requirements of emission reduction, energy conservation and green development. The first variable is carbon productivity which covers sustainable development and the low-carbon transition requirements of emission reduction. The second variable is total factor energy efficiency which covers sustainable development the low-carbon transition requirements of emission reduction and energy conservation. The third variable is green economic performance which covers sustainable development and the low-carbon transition requirements of emission reduction, energy conservation green development.There is a close link between human capital and low-carbon transition. First, human capital is the growth driver to support sustainable development. The equilibrium growth rate is higher if human capital accumulating faster. Second, human capital accumulation is an important way to ease the resource and environmental constraints. Relationship between optimal growth rates of human capital resources show that enhance the efficiency of human capital accumulation can reduce resource demand growth, then ease the resource and environmental constraints. Again, human capital is a key factor in promoting the carbon productivity growth. We can find that human capital growth have a positive impact on carbon productivity through various channels from carbon productivity equation. Years of education of the labor force growth can enhance the contribution of human capital to the carbon productivity. "Learning by doing" can promote carbon productivity growth too.The effects of human capital accumulation to carbon productivity were tested using provincial panel data of mainland China. Improvement of the human capital level contributes to carbon productivity growth; however, the contribution is extremely weak. Total factor energy efficiency and green economic performance containing undesirable output was estimated using Undesirable-SBM model and the provincial panel data of mainland China. Human Capital failed to bring significant improvement in total factor energy efficiency. Green economic performance promotion from environmental regulation was not significant, and there is a difference in the effect of the two environmental regulation variables on green economic performance. The human capital level has a direct effect in promoting green economic performance. The level and structure of human capital are both the threshold condition of "Potter hypothesis".In addition, empirical study tested some classic issues which are closely related to the low-carbon transition, such as "Clean Energy is Unclean," "Resource Curse", "Porter Hypothesis".The effect of non-fossil energy consumption has emerged to improve the carbon productivity, but the "Clean Energy is Unclean" problem exists to a certain extent. The relative strength and absolute strength of energy exploitation have a different impact on total factor energy efficiency. Overall, "Resource Curse" is not justified at the regional level. The regression results cannot provide support for "Potter hypothesis". The level and structure of human capital are both the threshold condition of "Potter hypothesis".