The Effects of Low-Carbon Governance on Energy-Environmental Efficiency: Evidence from China’s Low-Carbon City Pilot Policy

Energy-environmental efficiency directly relates to global climate change and sustainable development. The research applies a staggered DiD design to estimate the effects of low-carbon governance on energy-environmental efficiency via panel data of 284 cities in China. Results show that low-carbon governance significantly improves both unified energy-environmental efficiency and pure energy-environmental efficiency. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that low-carbon governance in central cities has no significant effect on energy-environmental efficiency, while that in peripheral cities can improve energy-environmental efficiency, which indirectly confirms the law of decreasing returns to scale. At the same time, low-carbon governance in both resource-based and non-resource-based cities improves energy-environmental efficiency. However, among resource-based cities, low-carbon governance in growth and mature cities facilitates energy-environmental efficiency, while this effect disappears in declining and regeneration cities. Mechanism tests suggest that low-carbon governance immediately improves energy-environmental efficiency through intensive energy use and carbon emission reduction channels. The intermediate effect channels are mainly driven by fiscal decentralization, industrial structure upgrading, industrial agglomeration, innovation, and marketization, where fiscal decentralization plays a dominant role.