Research On The Impact Of Carbon Trading Policy On Carbon Emission Efficiency Of China’s Steel Industry

The steel industry is the pillar industry of the national economy,the main force of carbon emissions and an important source of environmental problems such as climate warming.In the context of low-carbon development,countries continue to explor e policies and measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.Carbon trading policy is internationally recognized as a cost-effective policy tool for carbon emission reduction.Since the establishment of the EU carbon trading system in 2005,it has been implemented in many countries and regions.China has carried out pilot projects in "three provinces and five cities",and the national carbon trading market has also started trading in the power generation industry in July 2021.Due to the characteristics of h igh energy consumption and high carbon emission,the steel industry has been included in the first batch of carbon trading pilot industries.The implementation of carbon trading policy can reduce carbon dioxide emissions of steel industry,but it will also affect its economic output.Meanwhile,the carbon emission efficiency measuring economic output and carbon dioxide emissions will naturally be affected by carbon trading policy.This paper studies the influence of carbon trading policy on carbon emission efficiency of steel industry,which is of great significance to promote green and low-carbon development of steel industry and the improvement of national carbon trading market.Firstly,the influence mechanism of carbon trading policy on carbon emission efficiency of steel industry is analyzed.Secondly,the Super-SBM model of non-expected output is used to calculate the carbon emission efficiency of steel industry in 29 provinces and cities in China from 2006 to 2019,and the regional differences and evolution trend are analyzed.On this basis,the PSM-DID method is used to evaluate the impact of carbon trading policy on carbon emission efficiency of steel industry.The samples processed by PSM conform to the hypothesis of parallel trend of DID model,making the estimation result more accurate.At the same time,the influence of other control variables on the carbon emission efficiency of the steel industry is investigated,and the regional heterogeneity of the effect of carbon trading policy is further ana lyzed.Finally,the robustness of the empirical results is tested.The main conclusions are as follows:The overall level of carbon emission efficiency of China’s steel industry is relatively low,and there are significant differences between the efficienc y values of carbon trading policy pilot areas and non-pilot areas before and after the implementation of the policy.Carbon trading policy has a significant promoting effect on carbon emission reduction of steel industry,making the efficiency value of pilot areas increase by 17.1% on average.However,the effect of policy implementation has regional heterogeneity,the western region is the strongest,the central region is the second,and the eastern region is the weakest.From the control variables,the level of economic development,industrial scale,energy intensity and the degree of opening to the outside world have a significant negative impact on the improvement of carbon emission efficiency of the steel industry,while the technological level shows a promoting effect,but the environmental governance has no significant impact.Based on the above conclusions,relevant suggestions are put forward to promote the improvement of carbon emission efficiency of China’s steel industry and the improvement of carbon trading market.