Digitalization, Electricity Consumption and Carbon Emissions—Evidence from Manufacturing Industries in China

Abstract

The development of China’s manufacturing industry is constrained by factors such as energy and resources, and low-carbon development is arduous. Digitalization is an important method to transform and upgrade traditional industries. Based on the panel data of 13 manufacturing industries in China from 2007 to 2019, a regression model and a threshold model were used to empirically test the impact of digitalization and electricity consumption on carbon emissions. The research results were as follows: (1) The digitalization level of China’s manufacturing industry was steadily increasing; (2) The proportion of electricity consumption in China’s manufacturing industries in the total electricity consumption hardly changed from 2007 to 2019, basically maintaining at about 6.8%. The total power consumption increased by about 2.1 times. (3) From 2007 to 2019, the total carbon emissions of China’s manufacturing industry increased, but the carbon emissions of some manufacturing industries decreased. (4) There was an inverted U-shaped relationship between digitalization and carbon emissions, the higher the level of digitalization input, the greater the carbon emissions of the manufacturing industry. However, when digitalization develops to a certain extent, it will also suppress carbon emissions to a certain extent. (5) There was a significant positive correlation between electricity consumption and carbon emissions in the manufacturing industry. (6) There were double energy thresholds for the impact of labor-intensive and technology-intensive manufacturing digitalization on carbon emissions, but only a single economic threshold and scale threshold. There was a single scale threshold for capital-intensive manufacturing, and the value was −0.5352. This research provides possible countermeasures and policy recommendations for digitalization to empower the low-carbon development of China’s manufacturing industry.