Big data-driven digital industrialization has become a critical driver of high-quality development in China, but its impacts on urban energy transition remain empirically uncertain and theoretically underexplored. This study addresses this gap using a quasi-natural experiment of China’s National Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zones (NBDCPZ), panel data from 283 Chinese cities (2010–2023), and a combined DID-SDM (SDID) approach to estimate direct and spatial spillover effects while addressing SUTVA violations. Results show that digital industrialization reduces total urban energy consumption by 6% and improves energy efficiency, i.e. lowers unit GDP energy use. This net energy saving is achieved despite industrial output growth thanks to three key factors: industrial upgrade, green technology innovation, and reduced resource misallocation. Heterogeneity analysis reveals reductions in central China (9.8%), intra-regional pilot zones (9.0%), and large cities (7.0%), and also in non-resource-based cities and regions with advanced digital infrastructure. Crucially, there is significant spillover, where digital industrialization in one city can help neighboring cities cut energy consumption by 8.45%. This study contributes city-level causal evidence and quantitative insights, expands digital policy evaluation to energy consumption and efficiency, and integrates spatial dynamics into the digital-industrial-energy nexus. The findings offer guidance on synergizing digital transformation and low-carbon urban development.
Under the policy to curb both total carbon emissions and emissions intensity, close and complex interconnections have developed between the electricity market and the carbon market. A clearer understanding of the relationship between the two markets can promote their coordinated development. This paper first reviews China’s policies for coordinated development of the electricity and the carbon markets, local practices and explorations, and the main challenges facing market coordination. It finds problems in the top-level management apparatus of the two markets and discordance between their institutional frameworks, which makes it difficult for the cost of carbon to be properly reflected in the price of electricity. Second, using system dynamics methodology, a coupled simulation model is constructed for the electricity and carbon markets. By identifying reinforcing loops (R) and balancing loops (B) within the system, we uncover the intrinsic dynamic mechanisms of market coordination. Third, we construct an electricity–carbon price coupling model based on the carbon cost pass-through rate. By quantifying how much of the carbon cost is passed on to end users, we design a differentiated cost pass-through mechanism. Finally, we offer research recommendations from the perspectives of data interoperability, coordinated assessment, differentiated pricing, and improving the spatiotemporal resolution of the carbon emission factor of electricity (hereinafter referred to as “electricity–carbon factor”).
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year on record. Global warming is moving increasingly closer to the [Formula: see text]C temperature limit set by the Paris Agreement. Against a background of global economic uncertainty and geopolitical instability, international efforts to address climate change continued to move forward in 2025. The 30th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30), held in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025, achieved positive outcomes on a range of key issues. As a responsible major country, China has actively responded to a complex international environment and multiple challenges, remained firmly committed to a green and low-carbon development path, and made important contributions to promoting the global transition toward green and low-carbon development.
Global climate change is reshaping national development paths and the landscape of global governance. Since the conclusion of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, the international community has gradually formed a multilateral system centered on the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, establishing principles such as common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and carrying out cooperation in areas including mitigation, adaptation, finance, and technology. Since the Paris Agreement entered into force, climate finance has grown in importance and become a key pillar supporting climate action in developing countries and driving the green transition. From the billion-dollar pledge in 2009 to the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) after 2025, the climate finance issue is undergoing a leap from billions to trillions of dollars, with the allocation of responsibilities, funding sources, and governance rules becoming focal points of negotiations. As demonstrated at the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30), held in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025, divergence over issues such as the responsibility boundaries under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, fund governance rules, and the Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T continues to deepen, while developing countries’ demands for equity and accessibility have grown more intense. Meanwhile, climate diplomacy platforms are becoming increasingly diverse, through which interactions among entities such as G20, BRICS, and the Global South take place. The funding issue has gradually evolved into a game over development rights and institutional power. Looking ahead, China’s role in global climate finance governance and negotiations will attract even greater attention.
The year 2025 marks a critical juncture for all Parties to submit their new round of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, signaling the start of a new round of collective efforts toward global climate governance. The new round of NDCs have several new features: Most Parties submitted them after the deadline specified in the Paris Agreement; all submitted NDCs applied the information guidance; the majority covered all emission sectors and greenhouse gas (GHG) categories as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); and, moreover, over 95% of the Parties that submitted their NDCs responded to the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake (GST) under the Paris Agreement. The continuous communication of NDCs is a key part of the effective implementation of the Paris Agreement. The ambition and implementation of NDCs not only reflect the willingness and capacity of each country to fulfill its climate commitments, but also influence the overall pathway choices for global mitigation and adaptation. As an important participant in global climate governance, China should help to strengthen the bottom-up nature of NDCs, formulate NDCs that are realistic, feasible and meaningful, and guide the international community to uphold the principle that “successful governance relies on solid action” and shift its focus from target-setting to implementation. China should establish a working mechanism for formulating and implementing its NDCs to promote high-quality compliance, and at the same time, strengthen international exchanges on NDCs formulation and implementation, and tell China’s story well to the international community.
