Can green electrification expansion to rice cultivation reduce agricultural methane emissions in China?

Agricultural mechanization ties to fostering agricultural yield growth; however, it is still unknown how much methane from rice cultivation will be released after the universal electrification of the farm in the era of widespread agricultural mechanization. The main battlefield of greenhouse gas reduction is in industry, energy, and transportation sectors, and the emission reduction problem in agriculture and rural areas has not received enough attention. This study utilizes provincial data in China from 2010 to 2019 to investigate the farming facility electrification’s effect on methane emissions from rice production at the provincial level. In this way, methane emission mitigation potentials and regional heterogeneity can be identified. As a result, a negative association between the expansion of green agricultural machinery electrification in rice production and methane emissions is solved by the proposed econometric models, indicating the necessity of expanding green and motorized agricultural machinery across provinces in China. Besides, this finding is reinforced through the robustness check. This research further finds that a region that has stronger resources and environment-carrying capacity, obtains more R&D investment, and is located in carbon-constrained pilot areas, as well as being in South China, would abate a higher number of methane emissions as renewable energy generation penetrating agricultural machinery. This study’s findings support province-level expansion objectives for electrification of farming facilities and methane emission mitigation strategies. •Path-independent effect of methane emission is proven by Dynamic GMM models.•Reverse green energy consumption-methane association is significant.•The carbon pilot policy is beneficial for methane emission reduction.•Methane reduction attributes to renewable energy penetration in south China.•Build a novel framework identifying co-benefits of environmental regulations.