Environmental Effect And Policy Effect Of The Directed Of Energy Technical Change

The rapid evolution of China's economy has been mainly based on extensive growth pattern since the reform and opening up in China,which has led to high energy consumption,continuous reduction in environmental carrying capacity,and rising pollution control costs in directly.The above glitches have seriously threatened the potential of high-quality growth of China's economy.It is necessary to ensure sustainable and development with the economy,but also to be vigilant about environmental pollution caused by the rising in energy consumption.How to employ the policies of environmental regulation to solve the problems of pollution and effectively promote high-quality growth of China's economy is facing many complications.Fundamentally,there is an inelastic demand for economic to rely on the energy.It may be effective in the short term to decrease the burden on the environment to reduce the total energy consumption by improving energy efficiency,but it is difficult to achieve in the long term.To find a solution with this serious fact in China's economy,many scholars have set their sights on the energy technology and analyzed how to reduce the negative effect of energy use on the environment through the energy technical change.However,it must be noted that China's energy structure always presents the style fact that the proportion of traditional energy sources(coal,crude oil,and natural gas)is relatively in height.In this case,if we only pay attention to the magnitude of energy technical change and ignore the directed of energy technical change,under the condition of the free market economy,energy technical change is likely to be affected by the features of lock-in effect or path dependence on technology,which forced energy technology to develop mainly in the direction of traditional energy,thus forming the traditional bias of energy technology change.Although this kind of the directed of energy technical change can also improve China's energy efficiency,under the rebound effect of energy,traditional energy consumption may increase accordingly,and the increase in traditional energy consumption is bound to cause continuous pollution problems.This has formed the dilemma of Chinese “Jevons Paradox”,i.e.,it is hard to overcome the dilemma of both economic development and environmental pollution through the energy technical change.Meanwhile,this phenomenon may also be one of the imperative explanations for China's increasing in R&D investment at recent years continuously,and the problem of environmental pollution has still not been resolved.In general,to more effectively alleviate the contradictory problems of environmental pollution and economic development facing in China,it is urgent to increase investment and support for clean energy technology research and development.Combined with policies of environmental regulation,China's energy technology change will be promoted to show a clean bias,to complete the comprehensive replacement of traditional energy by clean energy,and finally realize the coordinated development of the economy and environment.To explain the above-mentioned practical difficulties faced by China's economics,this paper intends to systematically explore the impact of the directed of energy technical change on environmental quality based on the theory of endogenous growth and the theory of directed technical change,employing the combination pattern of theoretical analysis,numerical simulation,and the empirical method of econometrics.We also discussed the continuous role of the policy of heterogeneous environmental regulations(command and control and the market incentive)in the alteration of environmental quality.The conclusions of this paper can be summarized as follows:(1)The direction of energy technical change tends to harm pollution emissions,which shows that energy technical change can play a role in reducing pollution emissions and improving environmental quality when developing in a clean direction.However,the purification effect with the directed of energy technical change on the environment is significantly diverse due to the different pollutants.The clean bias of energy technical change has the strongest purification effect on solid pollutants,followed by liquid pollutants,and sulfur dioxide,a gas pollutant.The purifying effect is relatively weak,which shows the possible unbalanced trend of clean energy technology.Besides,the way of the effect of energy efficiency on environmental quality is uncertain.This finding indicates that the prerequisite for improving environmental quality is the alterations of the direction of energy technical change rather than exaltation of the magnitude of energy technical change.(2)Although the spatial leakage effect of pollutants between regions is gradually increasing in recent years,the clean bias of energy technology changes only reflects the purification of pollutants locally,and the impact on neighboring pollutants is limited.Co-processing of pollutants and energy technology cooperation needs to be further improved.It must be noted that the clean bias of energy technology change can not only improve environmental quality but also promote economic growth.However,this effect is not achieved overnight,but exhibits the “U-shaped” curve feature of the first decline and then rise.This phenomenon shows that in this stage,under the situation that traditional energy technology is dominant,focusing on the development of clean energy technology may inhibit the growth of total output,and the realization of the “two mountains theory” may experience the pain of a short-term economic downturn.(3)Environmental regulations with “Command and control” can optimize environmental quality by shifting energy technical change in a clear direction.But it must be explained that the transformative effect of this environmental regulation method on the bias of energy technical change also shows the feature of a “U-shaped”curve that first decreases and then increases.That is to say,the change in energy technology first develops in the direction of traditional energy technology.As the intensity of regulation increases,the clean bias of energy technical change will gradually be strengthened.Besides,contrary to the national level,the transformation effect in the central and western regions in China shows an "inverted U-shaped" relationship that first rises and then declines.The abundance of regional resources will not change the direction of environmental regulations with “command and control” to transform energy technical change but will affect the magnitude of the transformation effect.Finally,the impact of past environmental policies on the bias of energy technical change is more prominent than the current policies,which shows the feature of time lag.(4)Although environmental regulations with “market incentives” have reduced the emission of gaseous pollutants such as sulfur dioxide,they have failed to achieve the goal of transforming energy technical change in a clear direction.Meanwhile,the transformation effect also has a significant “time lag” and “uncertainty” feature.Time lag means that the effect of environmental regulations with “market-incentive” on energy directed technical change is not effective in the current period but a delay in time.The uncertainty shows that the transformation effect may be replaced by other environmental policies and temporarily invalidated.Finally,even if the combination of emission trading policies is adopted,the development of clean energy technologies cannot be improved in the short term.This proves that it is imperative to improve the trading mechanism of this type of market and increase the participation of enterprises if market-oriented means are to be employed to modify the directed of energy technical change and improve the environmental quality.