Environmental Regulation and Corporate Financing—Quasi-Natural Experiment Evidence from China

The Environmental Protection Law, which includes 70 articles and major changes in six aspects compared to the old law, is called in Chinese society the new Environment Protection Law. When the law was implemented in 2014, it was an important event in China that could be seen as a natural experiment. Based on a difference-in-differences model, this paper considers all of the listed heavily polluting enterprises between 2011 and 2016 as the experimental group and all of the other firms in the same industries listed on the Chinese stock market as the control group and examines the impact of the new Environmental Protection Law on the corporate financing of heavily polluting enterprises and its mechanisms. The results show that the strict environmental law caused Chinese listed enterprises to face higher environmental regulation costs, public pressure and environmental litigation. The financing capacity of heavily polluting enterprises has dropped significantly, especially in areas with higher regulatory intensity. Furthermore, since the new Environmental Protection Law was established, overinvestment by China’s heavily polluting enterprises has been significantly inhibited, and the decline in financing capacity exerts a mediating effect. The ultimate economic consequences of the new Environmental Protection Law are to decrease the corporate value of heavily polluting industries

Green Credit, Debt Maturity, and Corporate Investment—Evidence from China

Against the backdrop of working hard to build a beautiful country, this paper uses the promulgation of the “Green Credit Guidelines„ policy in China as a quasi-natural experiment. Based on a difference-in-differences (DID) model, the results show that, since the promulgation of the Green Credit Guidelines policy, financial institutions have significantly reduced the proportion of long-term debt to heavily polluting enterprises for reasons such as risk aversion and total credit constraints. Due to capital constraints and the restrictive terms of credit approval, the Green Credit Guidelines policy reduces the investment scale and overinvestment of heavily polluting enterprises. The dependency relationship of the debt maturity structure of heavily polluting enterprises with the investment scale and investment efficiency has been reduced. Furthermore, the negative net effect of the Green Credit Guidelines policy on long-term debt is more pronounced in heavily polluting enterprises that lack political connections. However, the promulgation of this policy inhibits the investment scale and the investment efficiency of heavily polluting enterprises (with or without political connections). To a certain extent, these results confirm the “supportive hand„ perspective towards political connections. The results of this research could help relevant government departments to understand the microeconomic consequences of the Green Credit Guidelines policy and could help improve and perfect China’s green credit policy

Forecasting method of clean energy development potential considering sector coupling

Sector coupling includes not only the coupling within energy sectors such as electricity, heat and gas, but also the coupling between energy sector and transportation sector, construction sector and industrial sector. This article introduces a method for measuring the development potential of clean energy based on sector coupling. First, the analysis model of electric energy substitution potential is constructed, the analysis object is determined, and the analysis object is quantified. On the basis of the definition of clean energy development potential, an IPAT model for electric energy substitution is constructed to realize the comprehensive evaluation of clean energy. Secondly, based on Markov theory to realize the sub-path calculation of the development potential of clean energy. Finally, based on the IPAT model and the decoupling theoretical model, this paper sets up three different alternative scenarios to make a more comprehensive prediction and analysis of the medium and long-term clean energy development potential, and applies the introduced measurement methods to the calculation of China’s clean energy development potential. The results show the effectiveness of the algorithm in the calculation of the development potential of clean energy based on sector coupling