Green bonds have become an important financial instrument for supporting environmental investment and industrial transformation. This paper examines short-term profitability dynamics around first green bond issuance among heavy-polluting firms listed on China’s A-share market. Using a staggered-adoption framework based on the group-time average treatment effect estimator of Callaway and Sant’Anna we compare issuing firms after issuance with never-issuing and not-yet-issuing firms while controlling for firm characteristics, firm fixed effects, and year fixed effects. The estimates show that issuing firms experience an average post-issuance ROE decline of approximately 4.9 percentage points during the four years following issuance. Given that the average ROE in the sample is 0.0702, this estimate is economically substantial. Because green bond issuance is a voluntary corporate financing decision rather than an externally assigned policy shock, the estimates are interpreted as treatment-on-the-treated effects under the assumptions of no anticipation, overlap, and conditional parallel trends. Additional diagnostics and a DuPont-style mechanism analysis suggest that the post-issuance ROE decline is mainly associated with lower net profit margins and, to a lesser extent, lower asset turnover. Heterogeneity analyses indicate that the post-issuance profitability pressure varies across ownership types, regions, and industries.

Scheduling electric vehicle (EV) charging behavior in the context of large-scale EV development is vital for building low-carbon societies. Using 2020 public charging data from Beijing, China, this study applies a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the impact of flexible charging price subsidies on drivers' behavior, distinguishing between business and private drivers to capture heterogeneity. The results show that a subsidy of CNY 0.4/kWh significantly increased the average daily charging volume by 25.29%. Specifically, the daily charging volume increased by 59.68% for business drivers and 12.22% for private drivers. The price elasticity of charging demand for all EV drivers was estimated at -0.95, with business and private drivers showing elasticities of -2.24 and -0.46, respectively. The economic and environmental benefits resulting from these behavioral changes after policy optimization are further discussed. These findings highlight the importance of tailoring price incentive policies to the varying sensitivities of different driver types.

Embodied carbon refers to the greenhouse gas emission associated with the lifecycle of buildings. Embodied carbon policies are critical for addressing the environmental impact of construction materials and advancing climate goals. Despite their importance, the adoption of embodied carbon policies has been limited globally, influenced by economic, environmental, institutional, and trade factors. This study employs structural equation modeling to analyze 37 countries, testing ten hypotheses across four categorical factors. The base model reveals the significant influence of environmental vulnerability and institutional frameworks on policy adoption, while robustness models confirm the critical role of trade dependencies and economic competitiveness in shaping national embodied carbon strategies. Findings underscore that countries with high climate vulnerability and strong institutional support are more likely to adopt embodied carbon policies. Conversely, trade-reliant nations face challenges balancing competitiveness and sustainability. Policy implications suggest the need for international collaboration to align trade policies with carbon reduction goals, targeted support for vulnerable nations, and the integration of embodied carbon considerations into existing climate frameworks. These results offer a roadmap for policymakers to design more effective and equitable embodied carbon policies, fostering global progress toward sustainable construction and decarbonization.

Heat pumps are an energy-efficient and increasingly cost-effective solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the building sector. However, other clean energy technologies, such as rooftop solar, are less likely to be adopted in underserved communities, and thus policies incentivizing their adoption may funnel support to well-resourced communities. Unlike previously studied technologies, the effects of heat pumps on household energy bills may be positive or negative depending on local climate, energy costs, building features, and other factors. Here, we propose a framework for assessing heat pump inequities across the US. We find that households in communities of color and with higher percentages of renters are less likely to use heat pumps across the board. Moreover, communities of color are least likely to use heat pumps in regions where they are most likely to reduce energy bills. Public policies must address these inequities to advance beneficial electrification and energy justice.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused severe economic contraction and paralyzed industrial activity. Despite a growing body of literature on the impacts of COVID-19 mitigation measures, scant evidence currently exists on the impacts of lockdowns on the economic and industrial activities of developing countries. Our study provides an empirical assessment of lockdown measures using 298,354 data points on daily electricity consumption in 396 sub-industries. To infer causal relationships, we employ difference-in-differences models that compare cities with and without lockdown policies and provide quantitative evidence on whether the long-term gain of lockdowns outweighs the short-term loss. The results show that lockdown policies led to a significant short-term drop in electricity consumption of 15.2% relative to the control group. However, the electricity loss under the no-lockdown scenario is 2.6 times larger than that under the strict lockdown scenario within 4 months of the outbreak. Discrepancies in the impacts among industries are identified, and even within the same industry, lockdowns have heterogeneous effects. The impact of lockdowns on small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries is seriously underestimated, raising concerns about the distributional impact of subsidy measures. This study serves as a crucial reference for the government when facing public health emergencies and shocks to support better policies.

Programs to alleviate poverty by corporations are increasingly popular as a new form of corporate social responsibility. This study examines how the political connections of a firm's chairperson are associated with decisions to alleviate poverty based on a sample of listed Chinese firms from 2016 to 2018. We find that the chairperson's political connections increase the probability of participation and the amount of investment in programs to alleviate poverty. This positive relationship is mainly manifested in firms with high agency costs and low regional economic conditions. In addition, the chairperson's political connections are not related to the efficiency of the poverty alleviation program. Politically connected firms receive less government recognition with an increase in investment in poverty alleviation. Our findings are consistent with the notion that firms participate in poverty alleviation programs for reciprocal favor exchanges, but they fail to manage these programs efficiently.

Joint prevention and control of atmospheric pollution (JPCAP) policies play a vital role in alleviating regional pollution. Based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model, we construct two policy strength measures of effectiveness and number, and investigate the effects of policy strength on air pollutant emissions for four types of JPCAP policies. The results show that the effects of economic incentive policy tools and supporting policy tools on emission reduction deviate significantly from policy preferences. Economic incentive policy tools are the most effective in promoting emission reductions in SO2, NOx and dust, but their effectiveness are the lowest in reality. Supporting policy tools, with the highest strength, have little effect on emission reduction. Command-control policies and persuasion policies are both relatively high in quantity and effectiveness. In addition, policy strength plays a more important role in reducing air pollutants in key regions than in non-key regions. JPCAP policies have gradually changed from a single policy tool to multiple policy tools, and the government shifted its attention to improving the legal effectiveness of policies after 2015. Finally, we propose some policy implications to optimize JPCAP policies and address regional air pollution problem.

Policymakers and academics are increasingly interested in using ‘social nudges’ to influence behavior, which are typically inexpensive relative to price-based and mandatory approaches. This study provides rigorous empirical evidence of the impacts of three big special environmental events, as a specific form of nudge, on short-run electricity-saving behaviors using high-frequency smart meter data in Shanghai, China, for both residential and commercial consumers. We find that World Environment Day and National Energy Saving Publicity Week caused commercial users to reduce their electricity consumption by 1.35 kWh h −1 and 0.6 kWh h −1 intra-event, around 17% and 8% reduction compared to average consumption, but the impacts decayed rapidly once the events ended. Earth Hour did not lead to significant energy-saving effects for both residential and commercial users. We further examine detailed activities implemented during these events to understand the heterogeneous impacts using social media and policy documents data.

Low-carbon pilot city (LCPC) programs have been implemented in China to facilitate low carbon production and consumption for combating climate change. The two rounds of low-carbon pilot regions covered six provinces and 36 cities in China. Governments have invested considerable funds and resources to develop LCPCs. Based on panel data from 49 cities for 2005-2018, we employ a matched difference-in-differences approach to explore the effects of the LCPC program on carbon intensity at the city level. Results show that in contrast to the program's goals and expectations, LCPCs significantly increased carbon intensity in both rounds by 15 %-20 % compared with control groups. The growth effect on carbon intensity gradually weakened in the third year following the adoption of the LCPC program. An influential factor analysis indicates that the effects are stronger in eastern coastal cities with improved economic conditions and a reduced proportion of secondary industry production. A series of robustness and placebo tests indicate that the results are robust. We identify possible reasons for this unexpected result, such as preliminary infrastructure construction and development of economic circles. These measures show that the process of decarbonization may result in higher carbon intensity in the short term.

The world is experiencing climate changes characterized by global warming, and energy conservation policies that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions are attracting increasing attention. Heating is one of the most important factors that contribute to the peak load of power consumption throughout the year. Incentive-based electricity demand response (EDR) policies can serve as an important regulation tool during energy system operations, especially in countries with a regulated power market like China. However, whether people will sacrifice comfort to respond to such a policy during hot spells or not and what will the impact be on vulnerable groups, are still unclear. To answer these questions, large-scale EDR trials involving more than 150,000 households were conducted in southwestern China during continuous extreme high temperatures. Households’ 15-min electricity consumption data, hourly meteorological data, and matched survey data were integrated to estimate the regulatory effect of this EDR policy and the discrepancies in response behaviors among urban and rural households, as well as households with children and the elderly. We found that this incentive based EDR policy is similar with price based policy, which can effectively reduce the peak load, however with little adverse effect on vulnerable groups. Temperature rise during a hot spell will slightly decrease the reduction effect. The energy-saving potential for urban households was higher than that of rural households. Households with children did not respond to the EDR policy, while the elderly response proved to be more positive during a hot spell. In addition, repeated and frequent implementation of this policy did not result in attenuation of the regulatory effect on power consumption. This is one of the few energy conservation options will have undergone multiple trials before promotion on a large scale in China, and the results can serve as a reference for countries with similar regulated power markets. Although, no direct harm is done to vulnerable groups, before deploy it nationwide, vulnerable groups still need to be considered to avoid exacerbating existing energy injustices or creating new energy injustices through transfer payment.

This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the correlation between Time-Of-Use (TOU) electricity pricing and the adoption of energy efficient appliances and solar panels. We use household-level data in Phoenix, Arizona from an appliance saturation survey of about 16,000 customers conducted by a major electric utility. Our empirical results show that TOU consumers are associated with 27% higher likelihood to install solar panels but not more likely to adopt energy-efficient air conditioning based on the propensity score matching and coarsened exact matching methods. The findings highlight that policy makers could combine TOU and solar panels when implementing educational programs or when giving out financial incentives to consumers. Our results imply that TOU is associated with a similar impact of the incentive offered by $2,070∼$10,472 tax credits or rebates on solar adoption.

Since 2013, China has implemented a large-scale initiative to systematically deploy solar photovoltaic (PV) projects to alleviate poverty in rural areas. To provide new understanding of China’s targeted poverty alleviation strategy, we use a panel dataset of 211 pilot counties that received targeted PV investments from 2013 to 2016, and find that the PV poverty alleviation pilot policy increases per-capita disposable income in a county by approximately 7%-8%. The effect of PV investment is positive and significant in the year of policy implementation and the effect is more than twice as high in the subsequent two to three years. The PV poverty alleviation effect is stronger in poorer regions, particularly in Eastern China. Our results are robust to alternative specifications and variable definitions. We propose several policy recommendations to sustain progress in China’s efforts to deploy PV for poverty alleviation.

Using nationally representative household survey data administered by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in this article, we attempt to analyze the aggregate behavior of households in terms of usage of appliances with explicit temperature control mechanism and the adoption of energy-efficient variants of other appliances. A multivariate probit analysis suggests that the households with larger size, higher income, and higher level of education are more likely to use smart thermostat to control temperature and purchase energy-efficient appliances. To identify the broad classes of household behavior, latent class analysis specifications are used. The optimal specification indicates that there are four broad classes of households. Consistent with the results of the multivariate probit specification, we find that the increased odds of belonging to the smart thermostat/energy-efficient appliance owner category of households over the no control/no energy-efficient appliance owner are related to variables, such as household type, size, and income. Therefore, targeting renters, apartment dwellers, and lower income households through appropriate household incentives and residential regulations are likely to improve outcomes in the adoption of efficient appliances and temperature control strategies.

Many energy policies are implemented to subsidize the adoption of energy efficiency. However, when private benefits from energy efficiency exceed the social benefits, there is an incentive for the consumers to over-invest in energy efficiency; otherwise, there is an incentive to under-invest. This study adds to this discussion by providing an empirical estimation of the electricity savings and social benefits after energy efficiency retrofits for consumers on time-of-use (TOU) and increasing block pricing, respectively. We aim to examine how social versus private savings from a given energy efficiency measure may be different depending on different pricing plans. This study applies hourly electricity data for about 16,000 residential consumers during 2013–2017 in Arizona. We show that for the TOU consumers, the private savings from energy-efficient AC retrofits are greater than the social savings by 61%, while the increasing block rate consumers’ private savings exceed the social savings by 46%, when other market failures are not considered (e.g., principal-agent problem and imperfect information). Different rate plans impose different marginal electricity prices which influence the incentives to invest in energy efficiency as well as electricity consumption behaviors that can influence both the private and social savings from energy efficiency. The result indicates that there should be potentially different levels of policy interventions towards energy efficiency for consumers on different pricing. Additionally, we also find that energy efficiency makes the electricity demand more elastic to price changes.

the reasonable location of a charging station will promote the rapid development of the new energy automobile industry. This paper initially establishes the location model of minimizing the total social cost with the purpose of a genetic algorithm solution. Next, an evaluation index system is constructed based on five location influencing factors; land cost, construction costs, road traffic flow, power grid conditions and the surrounding environment. Numerical studies show that both grey incidence decision and grey target theory have the advantages of ease of operation, low requirement of data collection and processing when they are employed while selecting the optimal location.

Tourism has been identified as a key economic sector vulnerable to climate change, yet direct empirical evidence is still lacking on the economic gain and loss of the tourism industry due to climate change. Here we find that temperature significantly affects the profits of the hotel industry with both spatial and seasonal heterogeneity. By using a rich dataset of the monthly financial records of more than 1700 hotels in 50 US states during 2016–2018 (approximately 3.2% of hotels nationally), we show that a deviation from 18 °C ∼ 20 °C in monthly averaged temperature leads to a decrease in the profit rate. The effect is triggered by fewer customers, less revenue, and higher cost per occupied room partially due to the increased usage of electricity and water. Such an effect can be lasting and is less impactful for higher chain scale hotels. In future GHG emission scenarios, climate change will lead to a loss of profit in most climate zones particularly the southern regions, with higher GHG emissions leading to a more serious effect. This study contributes to the literature on how climate change affects human activities and helps refine the relevant damage function of climate change on tourism in existing climate models.

Customers who adopt solar panels can reduce their energy bills and lower the effective average electricity prices they pay. When the price falls, a solar consumer might consume more electricity than before - a solar rebound effect. We provide the first empirical evidence of residential solar rebound effects in the U.S. We use household level hourly and daily electricity meter data as well as hourly solar panel electricity generation data from 277 solar homes and about 4000 non-solar homes from 2013 to 2017 in Phoenix Arizona. Using matching methods and a fixed effects panel regression approach, we find that when solar electricity generation increases by 1 kWh, solar homes increase their total electricity consumption by 0.18 kWh. This indicates that solar rebound effects are estimated at 18%. Building upon our theoretical framework, the increase in consumer surplus from solar panel adoption is estimated at $972/yr. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

•Energy performance gaps exist in green commercial buildings.•Organizational, behavioral and engineering factors could be responsible.•Surveys from facility managers in the United States were obtained.•LEED buildings are associated with factors more likely to cause the gap.

Credible estimates of energy savings from green buildings are critical for policy makers to examine the cost and benefit of various incentives intended to encourage commercial buildings to go green (e.g. expedited construction permits, government grants, and property tax incentives). Yet, data limitations have hindered reliable estimations. Filling this gap, this study uses a large panel dataset on energy consumption for commercial buildings in Phoenix metropolitan area, Arizona. By tracking building occupants' monthly energy consumption before and after the building's certification as an Energy Star building, we provide new estimates of the environmental gains from private investment in green real estate. Results show that for occupants that occupy space in a certified building in both the pre-certification and post-certification periods, occupants in Energy Star buildings consume 8% less energy. This empirically robust estimate of potential benefit from green-certification provides a quantifiable benchmark against which green-promoting policies can be measured. We also document evidence of heterogeneous treatment effects. Energy savings differ by the building's initial certification points and the building's baseline energy consumption. These results are useful for policy makers to identify targets for green certification.

In 2008, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering proposed 14 grand challenges for engineering, of which five were related to energy, water, and environment.The world population has exceeded 7.6 billion in 2018, up from 6.7 billion in 2008.A common goal of the human beings is to meet the global need of energy and water without sacrificing the environment.