Low-carbon city construction, spatial spillovers and greenhouse gas emission performance: Evidence from Chinese cities

Low-carbon cities (LCC) are conducive to low-carbon development and reshaping the urban economic growth model. However, it is still unknown whether it has a synergistic mitigation effect on other greenhouse gases (GHGs). In this study, a dataset comprising 283 Chinese cities spanning the period 2003 to 2019 is chosen. We employ spatial difference-in-difference (SDID) modeling to investigate both the impacts and mechanisms of LCC on GHG emissions performance. The results show that (1) LCC notably lowers local GHG emissions, enhances emission efficiency, and improves GHG emissions performance in neighboring cities within a 1000 km radius. (2) LCC indirectly enhances the GHG emissions performance of local and neighboring cities through energy intensity and green technology innovation. Notably, LCC boosts the local GHG emissions performance by industrial structure upgrading and resource allocation but harms the positive spillover effects on nearby cities due to the siphoning effect. (3) The effect and spatial impact of LCC on GHG emission performance is notably pronounced in eastern cities, non-resource cities, and key environmental protection areas. The results of the study will further promote the development of LCC and provide an important decision-making reference for urban low-carbon sustainability. •GHG emissions performance was assessed using CO2, methane and nitrogen dioxide data.•The causal effect of LCC and GHG emissions performance is accurately estimated.•It explored the main ways LCC affects GHG emissions performance.•It clarified the boundaries of the spatial spillover effect of LCC.•The endogeneity problem is mitigated by the SLX-2SLS model.