Indirect effects of carbon taxes on water conservation: A water footprint analysis for China

The distributional effects of China'senvironmental taxation: A multi-regional analysis

Environmental taxation is regarded as an effective tool to improve air quality in China, but its distributional effects causing serious disparity among multi-groups and multi-regions are understudied. Here this paper constructs a multi-regional dynamic recursive computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to explore the distributional effects of China's environmental taxation among different income groups and regions, by specifying the elasticity parameters of urban households' consumption in the model, and combining with various micro-data such as household survey data and environmental statistics database. This paper simulates the air pollution reductions of China's environmental taxation, and the impacts on the income and expenditure of households with various environmental tax rates or manners of tax revenue recycling. Results have shown that China's environmental taxation will widen the gap between different income groups and different regions. Also, such adverse distributional effects will be increased by higher environmental tax rates. However, recycling environmental tax revenues to both households and enterprises can reduce the losses of households' income and consumption. Yet recycling revenues to enterprises is more effective in narrowing the gap between income groups and regions while improving regional economic development. Our findings may pave a way to design appropriate environmental tax rates and tax revenue recycling manners for China's future environmental tax policies at the regional level.

Environmental and Resource Impacts from an Aggressive Regionalized Carbon Peak Policy

When and how to achieve a carbon peak is a concern for provincial regions within China under the context of achieving carbon neutrality in 2060. This study investigates the overall carbon peak environmental and resource impacts under current national targets and Shanghai's latest more aggressive carbon peak policy by using a dynamic multiple-region computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for the year 2030. Results show that (1) the national carbon peak and the more aggressive regional policy in Shanghai will result in energy consumption and carbon emissions decreases when compared to the business-as-usual scenario in most provinces; (2) although some cobenefits in water use reduction may occur in most provinces under the carbon policy scenarios, the results show positive and negative variations; (3) provincial level environmental and resources in transport, electricity, metal smelting and pressing, and agricultural production sectors are most influenced by Shanghai's aggressive carbon peak policy; and (4) the outsourced environmental and resource impacts from Shanghai to other provinces are very significant under Shanghai's aggressive carbon policy. These relevant results provide insights to facilitate broader governance decision-making for environmental resource nexuses while seeking an improved understanding of global sustainable development and climate governance.

Exploring the Impact and Path of Environmental Protection Tax on Different Air Pollutant Emissions

Existing studies have examined the double dividend effect of environmental protection tax. However, less attention has been paid to the influencing factors and transmission paths of the pollution abatement effect of the environmental protection tax. Based on the panel data for 30 of China’s provinces from 2007 to 2019, this study discusses the environmental protection tax’s influencing factors and transmission paths on the emission scale and intensity of different air pollutants through the panel threshold regression model and mediating effect model. The results show that: (1) the environmental protection tax has a positive emission reduction effect on the emission scale or emission intensity of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and nitrogen oxides (NO₂); (2) the abatement effect is stronger when per capita gross regional product is above the threshold value; (3) technological progress, economic growth, and industrial structure all have positive mediating effects. Therefore, the local environmental protection tax rate should be set with comprehensive consideration of regional economic development, industrial structure, and technological progress.