Can the Digital Economy Accelerate “Carbon Neutrality”?—An Empirical Analysis Based on Provincial Data in China

Abstract

The prosperous development of the digital economy can trigger a comprehensive green transformation from factors of production to productivity and production relationships, providing a new path for China to achieve its goals of “peak carbon emissions” and “carbon neutrality.” This paper measures the development level of the digital economy in each region using panel data of 30 Chinese provinces (autonomous regions, municipality directly under the central government) from 2007–2019, and explores the effect of the digital economy on CO2 emissions, its transmission mechanism, and its impact characteristics through theoretical and empirical analyses. The results indicate that: (1) the development of the digital economy can effectively reduce CO2 emissions; (2) in addition to direct effects, the digital economy can indirectly suppress CO2 emissions by lowering energy intensity, promoting economic agglomeration, and increasing the use of robots; (3) the suppression effect of the digital economy on CO2 emissions has significant regional heterogeneity; the digital construction in east, north, central, northeast, and southwest China has shown a better CO2 emissions reduction effect, while the development of the digital economy in south and southwest China has not yet exerted the suppression effect on CO2 emissions. In the next development process, it should improve the efficiency of energy use, give full effect to the positive externalities of economic agglomeration, lower the threshold of robot use and expand the application scenarios, and make full use of the green development advantages of the digital economy.