Journal
ENERGY POLICY
Volume 168, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113128
Keywords
Paris agreement; Environmental efficiency; Fuzzy regression discontinuity design
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [71911540483, 71603105]
- Shandong Normal University, Jinan, Shandong, China [250358]
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This study evaluates the impact of the Paris Agreement on environmental efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions in 162 countries from 1990 to 2020. Results indicate that developed countries have improved environmental efficiency due to technological progress, while developing countries and least developed countries have experienced declines. The policy intervention of the Paris Agreement has reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improved global environmental efficiency, but the effects vary among countries, with developed countries benefiting more.
The most remarkable global climate agreement to date, the Paris Agreement of 2015 requires all countries to set emissions-reduction commitments. However, experts say that the pledges are not enough to prevent the global average temperature from rising 1.5 degrees C. This study adopts the Paris Agreement as a quasi-natural experiment and evaluates its policy intervention on environmental efficiency as well as GHG emissions in 162 countries from 1990 to 2020. We applied a global Malmquist-luenberger productivity (GML) index to measure global environmental efficiency. Moreover, we used seven major sources of GHG emissions to develop a comprehensive indicator of environmental degradation using the Principle Component Analysis (PCA). Results showed that developed countries experienced an increase in environmental efficiency, whereas developing and least developing countries (LDCs) showed decline. Technological progress was the key component of environmental efficiency in developed countries, while technical efficiency was the main indicator in developing countries and LDCs. Results of fuzzy regression discontinuity analysis documented that the policy intervention of the Paris Agreement was conducive to the global environmental efficiency by reducing the level of GHG emissions. However, the implementation of the Paris Agreement exerted heterogeneous effects on environmental efficiency with developed countries relatively experienced more profound effect.
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