Digital Economy, Energy Structure and Carbon Emissions: Evidence from China

The digital economy is an important driving force for China's economic transformation and upgrading, while "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality" is the goal to be achieved in China. Based on the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces (cities and districts) from 2012 to 2019, the article empirically investigates the impact of the digital economy on regional carbon emissions and its mechanism of action by using a two-way fixed-effects model and mediated-effects model. The study shows that, firstly, the digital economy has a significant carbon emission reduction effect, and the conclusion still holds after robustness testing. Secondly, the emission reduction effect of industry digitization in the digital economy dimension is the most obvious. Again, the carbon emission reduction effect of digital economy development on different regions varies, with the strongest carbon emission reduction effect on western regions and regions with high carbon emission levels. Finally, the analysis of mediating effects shows that the energy structure is an important mechanism for the digital economy to suppress regional carbon emissions. The findings of the study provide a feasible path and policy reference for the digital economy to contribute to the goal of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality." Global warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has become the focus of global attention, and China, as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, has actively set carbon emission reduction targets. Meanwhile, at this stage, the digital economy has become an important driving force for China's future high-quality economic development, and it is of great practical significance to explore whether the digital economy can contribute to carbon emission reduction. Therefore, based on the provincial panel data from 2012 to 2019, this paper firstly confirms that the digital economy can reduce regional carbon emissions in a more systematic way using a two-way fixed-effects model, and the conclusion that the digital economy has a significant carbon emission reduction effect still holds after passing a series of robustness tests. Secondly, to investigate the effect of three different dimensions of the digital economy on carbon emissions, a heterogeneity analysis of the digital economy reveals that digital infrastructure, digital industrialization, and industrial digitization all have significant negative effects on carbon emissions, and the effect of industrial digitization is the most obvious, followed by the effect of digital infrastructure, and the effect of digital industrialization is the weakest. Then, to investigate the carbon emission reduction pattern of the digital economy under different carbon emission levels, quantile regression was conducted, and the regression results found that the higher the carbon emission level, the more obvious the inhibitory effect of the digital economy on carbon emission. Then, to investigate the carbon emission reduction effect of the digital economy in different regions of China, the regional heterogeneity analysis was conducted in the eastern, central, and western regions of China, and it was found that both the eastern and western regions can promote carbon emission reduction, but the western region has the most obvious role in promoting carbon emission reduction. Finally, to investigate whether energy structure can play a mediating role in the impact of the digital economy on carbon emissions, the energy structure was included in the regression analysis, and the results showed that the digital economy can reduce the share of coal and thus reduce carbon emissions by improving the energy structure.