The Mechanism And Policy Of Technological Progress Promoting Ecological Civilization Construction In China's Green Transition Process

After nearly 40 years of rapid development,China has made great achievements in the field of economic development.However,at the same time,overuse of energy resources has led to an increasingly serious damage to ecological environment.In particular,air pollution has become an obstacle for China toward modern civilization,depressing the sustainable development of China's economy.Against this background,the construction of ecological civilization has been paid more and more attention to by the CPC Central Committee,especially since the 18th CPC National Congress.The central government has given ecological civilization new historical status and regarded it as an important part of the overall"five in one"for building socialism.In the 19th Congress report in 2017,the general secretary,Xi Jinping,further stressed that"the construction of ecological civilization is in the contemporary era and benefits for a long time",and"Building ecological civilization is a millennium plan for the sustainable development of the Chinese nation".At present,on the whole,the level of ecological civilization construction in China still lags behind its economic performance.The contradiction between growth and environment will persist for a long time.The construction of ecological civilization has a long way to go.More importantly,the 18th CPC report proposed an innovation-driven development strategy and emphasized that"science and technology innovation must be placed at the core of the overall national development."The 19th Party Congress in 2017 further proposed the strategy of accelerating the construction of an innovative country.As a result,technological innovation is essential for social productivity and human civilization.In particular,green technology innovation provides a strategic support for the construction of ecological civilization.However,at present,it is not clear whether China's technological progress is beneficial to the construction of ecological civilization as a whole.This is because technological progress is divided into productive technology progress and clean technology progress,only the latter being conducive to energy conservation and environmental protection.This thesis attempts to study how green technology progress promotes ecological civilization construction from the perspective of environmental pollution control and energy efficiency.The contributions of this thesis are as follows:?1?previous literature mainly focused on the use of provincial panel data.In the third chapter,we collected the patent authorization data at the city level for the first time to represent the domestic independent innovation.Due to the lack of annual statistical data of PM_2.5.5 over the past years,we use satellite data to proxy the data over the period 2003-2012,and combine them with the relevant annual statistical data,and thus obtain the annual PM_2.5.5 concentration data over 2003-2015.On the basis of the existing economic theories,this chapter systematically studies the effects of independent innovation,foreign technology introduction and the digestion and absorption ability of domestic enterprises on imported technologies,respectively.Considering the possibility of endogeneity bias between economic growth and environmental pollution,we use spatial dynamic GMM model to characterize the spatial spillover effects of technological progress on environmental pollution.?2?In the fourth chapter,we calculate the city-level meta-frontier productivity index under the constraint of energy and environment by using the linear programming method.We then take it as the proxy variable of the green energy efficiency and analyze the evolution of the energy efficiency of the three major regions spanning from 2004 to 2015 in China.A key concern is that the relationship between technological progress and energy efficiency may be nonlinear over time,and this relation may depend on the degree of economic development and investment in science and technology across cities.In this part,a panel smoothing transition model is built to study the nonlinear relationship between different sources of technology and the energy efficiency.For the third and the fourth chapters,the empirical analysis of historical data is carried out.In the following two chapters,a stylized integrated model is applied to simulate the impact of green technological progress on environmental improvement.?3?In the fifth chapter,considering that ecological damage is more serious in Shanxi province as an example,we use the dynamic computable general equilibrium model to simulate the progress of green technology to achieve SO₂ emission reduction targets and explore the economic impact of it on the region and the synergy brought by it.Furthermore,we put forward the policy choice of implementation of specific pollution reduction targets.?4?In the sixth chapter,we study how to reach the 2030 carbon intensity target of 60-65%put forward by the Chinese government in 2015 at the Paris climate agreement,as compared to the 2005 level.We set the technological progress as endogenous and consider the non-fossil energy development goals in the 13th Five-Year Plan.By using CGE model,we analyze the macroeconomic impact of implementation of carbon intensity targets in 2030 and give the appropriate policies.The main findings of this thesis are as follows:?1?there are significant spatial spillover effects of technological progress on environmental pollution,and the degree of technological progress from different sources on the environmental pollution are different.Most of the cities show the distribution of"high-high"and"low-low"aggregation.For the case of SO₂,domestic independent innovation does not reduce SO₂ emissions.Increasing the level of technology introduction and domestic companies'digestion and absorption capacity is conducive to the suppression of SO₂,and it also confirms the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve for SO₂ in China.The results show that most cities in China are located on the right side of the inverted U-shaped curve.In other words,as the economy continues to grow,SO₂ emissions will continue to decline.In addition,there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between independent innovation and SO₂ pollution.Spatial regression results show that SO₂ emission reduction in a certain area is positively affected by the spillover of independent innovation and technology introduction in neighboring regions.In contrast,domestic independent R&D significantly inhibits PM_2.5.5 pollution,and the level of technology introduction and domestic companies'digestion and absorption capacity are not conducive to reducing PM_2.5.There exsits an N-shaped relation between domestic independent innovation and PM_2.5.5 pollution.The result shows that if the PM_2.5.5 pollution control policy is not adopted,the PM_2.5.5 concentration will continue to increase.The spatial terms show that the decrease of PM_2.5.5 concentration in a certain area has a positive effect on the digestion and absorption capacity of enterprises in neighboring regions.?2?Technological progress has a significant nonlinear impact on energy efficiency,that is,the role of technological progress in energy efficiency is different due to the economic development level and the investment in science and technology of different cities.In less developed cities,independent research and development is conducive to improving energy efficiency,but technology introduction is not conducive to energy efficiency improvement.In developed cities,independent research and development will inhibit energy efficiency,and this inhibitory effect of technology import on energy efficiency is lower than that in less developed cities.?3?The result of CGE model for Shanxi province in shows that the green technology alone is not enough to achieve emission reduction targets,even causing the energy rebound phenomenon.Therefore,it needs additional environmental tax tools.For example,to achieve the 30%of SO₂ emission reduction targets,in 2017 and 2030,the sulfur tax should be set as 6278.07 yuan/t and 17442.36yuan/t,respectively.Achieving the SO₂ reduction targets has little negative impact on economic growth in this region.Conditioning on green technical progress and energy efficiency,the marginal abatement cost of SO₂ pollution is low,implying that in the long term,to control air pollution emission with the market-driven mechanism is reasonable and feasible,and the loss of social welfare can be reduced.Hence,the progress of green technology is the most fundamental means to reduce environmental pollution and promote the construction of ecological civilization.?4?Through the combination of carbon tax and green low carbon technology progress,it can achieve the target of carbon emission intensity reduction of 60-65%in 2030 compared to the level of 2005.However,the realization of this goal will have a negative impact on economic growth as a whole.For example,it will reduce the output and employment level of the coal and oil sectors.But the realization of this goal is conducive to the development of the clean energy industry and the service industry,the construction industry and the heavy industry.From the perspective of the marginal reduction cost of carbon emissions,the marginal reduction cost in the short term is higher than that in the long term.The long-term marginal cost of carbon emissions in China is between 200 yuan/t and 250 yuan/t.By comparing the results of different types of technological progress,we propose that the endogenous mechanism is conducive to mitigating the negative effects of carbon emission reduction policy on economic growth.Therefore,when formulating relevant emission reduction policies,it is necessary for the governments to consider endogenous technological progress so as not to overestimate the negative impact of carbon intensity control targets on the macro economy.Finally,according to the conclusions above,the suggestions of how technological progress promotes the construction of ecological civilization from the perspective of energy saving and environmental pollution are given as follows:?1?increasing proportion of environmental-friendly R&D investment,and enhancing the R&D's assimilating capability of green technology;?2?adjusting overseas investment policies,and raising foreign enterprises'barriers to entry;?3?enlarging proportion of renewable energy consumption,and improving the energy utilization efficiency;?4?levying environmental taxes;?5?strengthening the environmental awareness of all interest communities,and changing the consumption pattern of residents.