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Purpose – The net increase in China's urban population in the last 50 years equals the current total population of the European Union. The scale and speed of urbanization in China requires a sustainable solution to unprecedented energy demands and elevated carbon emissions. As low-carbon development emerges in urban China, it offers a unique vantage point to examine some fundamental theoretical questions of the environmental state. How do structural socioeconomic changes affect the environmental state? Does the rise of the environmental state offer a basis for regulatory reform on a broader scale?

Methodology/approach – Case study of five low-carbon cities in China provides the empirical evidence for the analysis. The five cities represent a continuum in their levels of postindustrialization. I compare low-carbon development strategies in postindustrial cities with those strategies in industrial cities. Evidence is collected primarily by way of interviews with planning bureau officials, urban design professionals, involved NGOs, academics, and private sector individuals familiar with the matter.

Findings – First, in cities where the level of postindustrialization is high, state resources support innovative low-carbon development strategies that attempt to achieve emission reductions in a variety of sectors. In industrial cities, however, the environmental state's regulative power is limited to one or two (sub)sectors. Second, and more importantly, a new pattern of governance is emerging in postindustrial cities. Low-carbon development in postindustrial cities is a much less centralized process, having local levels of governments as key players of low-carbon policy making. When the environmental state intersects with the postindustrial city, it gives birth to a new urbanism that has profound implications for political structuring in China.

Research limitations – The analysis in this chapter is based on evidence from a purposefully selected set of Chinese cities, which may render the results biased. Future studies should aim for a more systematic analysis of cities in order to establish more generalizable conclusions. In addition, given the increasing availability of quantitative data at the city level in China, future studies should also seek to incorporate quantitative analyses to better substantiate existing knowledge derived from qualitative sources of evidence.

Originality/value of chapter – First, this chapter challenges the Western bias in the existing literature on the environmental state. The role of the civil society is far from salient in the Chinese context, and yet the environmental state demonstrates a robust level of activity despite the weak civil society. It therefore seems that a general theory of the environmental state can be built from existing literature, but needs to be sensitive to non-Western social conditions that might falsify parts of the theoretical claims. Second, the environmental state literature can be consolidated and further developed when examined in conjunction with other literatures in the modernity tradition. I have demonstrated the connection between the environmental state and the postindustrial city. More studies are needed to examine other facets of the environmental state, as it intersects with a multitude of (post)modern conditions.

Global climate change is a serious threat to the survival and development of mankind. Reducing carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality are the keys to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting sustainable human development. For many countries, taking China as an example, the electric power sector is the main contributor to the country’s carbon emissions, as well as a key sector for reducing carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality. The low-carbon transition of the power sector is of great significance to the long-term low-carbon development of the economy. Therefore, on the one hand, it is necessary to improve the energy supply structure on the supply side and increase the proportion of new energy in the total power supply. On the other hand, it is necessary to improve energy utilization efficiency on the demand side and control the total primary energy consumption by improving energy efficiency, which is the most direct and effective way to reduce emissions. Improving the utilization efficiency of electric energy and realizing the low-carbon transition of the electric power industry requires synergies between the government and the market. The purpose of this study is to investigate the individual and synergistic effects of China’s low-carbon policy and the opening of urban high-speed railways (HSRs) on the urban electricity consumption efficiency, measured as electricity consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP).

This study uses a panel of 289 Chinese prefecture-level cities from the years 1999–2019 as the sample and uses the time-varying difference-in-difference method to test the relationship between HSR, low-carbon pilot cities and urban electricity consumption efficiency. In addition, the instrumental variable method is adopted to make a robustness check.

Empirical results show that the low-carbon pilot policy and the HSR operation in cities would reduce the energy consumption per unit of GDP, and synergies occur in both HSR operated and low-carbon pilot cities.

This study has limitations that would provide possible starting points for future studies. The first limitation is the choice of the proxy variable of government and market factors. The second limitation is that the existing data is only about whether the high-speed rail is opened or not and whether it is a low-carbon pilot city, and there is no more informative data to combine the two aspects.

The findings of this study can inform policymakers and regulators about the effects of low-carbon pilot city policies. In addition, the government should consider market-level factors in addition to policy factors. Only by combining various influencing factors can the efficient use of energy be more effectively achieved so as to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality.

From the social perspective, the findings indicate that improving energy utilization is dependent on the joint efforts of the government and market.

The study provides quantitative evidence to assess the synergic effect between government and the market in the low-carbon transition of the electric power industry. Particularly, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to comprehend the role of the city low-carbon pilot policy and the construction of HSR in improving electricity efficiency.

In confronting the challenge of climate change and progressing towards dual carbon goals, China is actively implementing low-carbon city pilot policy. This paper aims to focus on the potential impact of this policy on enterprise green governance, aiming to promote the reduction and balance of carbon emissions.

Based on the panel data of China's large-scale industrial enterprises from 2007 to 2013, this paper uses the Difference-in-differences (DID) method to study the impact and path mechanism of the implementation of low-carbon city pilot policy on enterprise green governance. Heterogeneity analysis is used to compare the effects of low-carbon city pilot policy in different regions, different enterprises and different industries.

The low-carbon pilot can indeed effectively enhance corporate green governance, a conclusion that still holds after a series of robustness tests. The low-carbon city pilot policy mainly enhances enterprise green governance through two paths: an industrial structure upgrade and enterprise energy consumption, and it improves green governance by reducing enterprise energy consumption through industrial structure upgrade. The impact of low-carbon city pilot policy on enterprise green governance shows significant differences across different regions, different enterprises and different industries.

This paper examines the impact of low-carbon city pilot policy on enterprise green governance. However, due to availability of data, there are still some limitations to be further tackled. The parallel trend test in this paper shows that the pilot policy has a significant positive effect on the green governance of enterprises. However, due to serious lack of data in some years, the authors only selected the enterprise data of a shorter period as our experimental data, which leads the results to still have certain deficiencies. For the verification of the impact mechanism, the conclusions obtained in this paper are relatively limited. Although all the mechanism tests are passed, the reliability of the results still needs to be further tested through future data samples. In addition, as the pilot policy of low-carbon cities is still in progress, the policy can be tracked and analysed in the future as more data are disclosed, and further research can be carried out through dimensional expansion.

Low-carbon city pilot policy plays an important role in inducing the green governance of enterprises. Therefore, policy makers can continue to strengthen the construction of low-carbon city pilots by refining pilot experience, building typical cases, actively promoting pilot policy experience, expanding pilot scope and enhancing the implementation efficiency of pilot policy nationwide, which will contribute to the optimization and upgrading of the regional industrial structure at the urban level and will provide experience and reference for the synergistic implementation plan of pollution reduction and carbon reduction.

The impact of the low-carbon city pilot policy on enterprise green governance not only exists in two separate paths of urban industrial upgrading and enterprise energy consumption but also exists in a chain transmission path from macro to micro. The authors find that the effect value of each influence path is different, and there is an obvious leading influence path for the role of enterprise green governance. Therefore, in the process of implementing a low-carbon city pilot policy, policies should be designed specifically for different mechanisms. Moreover, complementing and coordinating several paths should be advocated to give full play to the green governance effect of enterprises brought by different paths and to further expand the scope of industries and enterprises where policies play a role.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, this paper connects macro mechanisms with micro mechanisms, discovering a macro-to-micro transmission mechanism in the process of low-carbon city pilot policy affecting enterprise green governance. That is, the low-carbon city pilot policy can facilitate industrial structure upgrading, resulting in reduced enterprise energy consumption, ultimately enhancing enterprise green governance.

The rationality of the selection and application of policy instruments in current policy schemes for promoting the development of low-carbon eco-cities in China is examined and, in view of existing problems, effective suggestions for scientifically and reasonably organizing and designing policy instruments are proposed, which is of great significance to optimize the policy system for the development of low-carbon eco-cities in China and thereby promote sustainable urban development.

In the study, using 117 policy documents focusing on the development of low-carbon eco-cities issued by the Chinese central government as well as the relevant ministries and commissions between 2010 and 2019 and comprehensively adopting bibliometric and content analysis methods, the contents of policy documents are quantitatively analyzed from three dimensions: policy instrument, policy area and policy target.

The study finds the following. Ecological environment and low-carbon development are the focus of policy attention. Policy-promulgating institutions have formed a core subnetwork, that is, an “iron triangle.” There exists a structural imbalance in the use of policy instruments, and the distribution of policy instruments in different policy areas exhibits significant differentiating characteristics. Driven by different policy targets, the proportion of the policy instrument types adopted by the government is constantly changing. According to these findings, suggestions are put forward to optimize China's low-carbon eco-city development policy.

(1) A three-dimensional policy analysis framework is conducted from the perspective of policy instrument, which is innovative in theory. (2) This paper finds the selective utilization rationality and evolution rule of China's low-carbon eco-city development policy instruments. (3) Recommendations on optimizing China's low-carbon eco-city development policies are discussed systematically, which plays a theoretical guiding role in optimizing the development policies of low-carbon eco-cities in China.

To accelerate the development of low-carbon industry in Zhaoqing City, transform the mode of economic growth, and promote industrial transformation and upgrading, the SWOT analysis method was applied. From the four aspects of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, the feasibility of developing a low-carbon economy in Zhaoqing was systematically analyzed. From the adjustment of industrial structure, the optimization of energy structure, the promotion of low-carbon tourism, the development of circular economy, and the enhancement of carbon sink capacity, the development path of low-carbon economy was explored. Based on the above analysis, a low carbon development plan was prepared. From the implementation of low-carbon development strategy, the choice of low-carbon economy pilot, and the low-carbon economic security system, the implementation steps of Zhaoqing's low-carbon economy were discussed in detail. The results showed that the low-carbon economy concept provided some ideas for Zhaoqing's economic development. Therefore, Zhaoqing is still in its infancy. The city's transportation system is not perfect. To develop a low-carbon economy, governments, enterprises, and individuals need to participate actively.

The contradiction between urban development and urban ecology is becoming more distinct with the global population growth and rapid economic development. This study investigated the construction of an evaluation index system for the ecological planning of modern industrial cities based on the low carbon concept to address the ecological crisis brought by the economic development of industrial cities. The entropy and weight calculation methods were adopted. The three-level evaluation system of the low-carbon ecological planning evaluation index was constructed. The basic model STIRPAT and the SPSS statistical analysis method were adopted. Regression analysis was conducted on the influencing factors of the low carbon ecological planning of a port city. The analytic hierarchy process was used, and the ecological construction of an industrial city was evaluated. Research results show that the evaluation index system of this study is suitable for the low carbon planning of industrial cities. The results of the ecological planning in Tianjin were analyzed, and several countermeasures and suggestions for the ecological planning and construction of industrial cities were provided. Thus, this study has a significant reference value.

Coordinating the relationship between economic development and environmental protection has emerged as a relevant issue in the economic and social development of China under the pressure of global climate change and international carbon emission reduction. Based on this, starting from the model of traffic structure and land use, land use planning for low carbon cities abroad was studied in this paper. Based on the analysis of urban ecological economic carbon cycle and its land regulation mechanism, the evaluation method of urban land use carbon effect was put forward. Taking the carbon circulation as the premise, starting from the layout characteristics of the urban land use factors, land use planning for urban residential, transportation, industrial and green land was optimized. Taking million springs Music City in Hainan as the example, the ecological planning layout was analyzed. And the planning was carried out from the aspects of spatial pattern, low carbon economy industry, green traffic, flood prevention and green landscape, etc. Urban carbon balance was realized. The results show that the carbon circulation and carbon consumption planning and management of the urban eco economic system based on land use structure optimization are conducive to promoting the development of urban low-carbon economy.

There is a growing awareness of the dangers of climate change and global warming due to increasing energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Campus universities are critical for implementing low-carbon development efficiently, given the large population and socio-economic activities concentrated on campus. This paper aims to explore the existing campus management initiatives and recommends holistic driving elements towards successful low-carbon campus development.

This study’s triangulation of information was supplemented by contributions from 116 respondents on the UiTM Shah Alam campus and eight professional interviews with stakeholders involved in low-carbon campus projects.

The study reported that low-carbon strategies had been implemented on the UiTM Shah Alam campus, with most existing programmes and activities focusing on low-hanging fruit initiatives. Moreover, the findings indicate that financial, cultural, behavioural, organisational and physical constraints are critical challenges to effectively implementing low-carbon approaches. The proposed techniques suggest that generating green funding, defining clear targets, developing standard procedures for carbon assessment and monitoring, also boosting education and outreach programmes lead to the improvement of low-carbon campus efforts.

The outcomes of this paper offer perspective to campus administration and community into an evaluation of current approaches and strategies for merging low-carbon systems. The effectiveness of low-carbon implementation was ensured by addressing issues concerning low-carbon uptake and fostering low-carbon improvement.

Besides providing a better understanding of techniques to implementing low-carbon development in Malaysia, the critical hurdles and driving factors, the output from this study adds to the existing knowledge available concerning the campus community’s existing comprehension.

This paper aims to examine the effect of carbon emissions on audit fees. The authors hypothesize that firms in cities with higher carbon emission levels have lower reporting transparency, higher return volatility or are subject to higher reputation risk, causing them to be charged higher audit fees for auditing services.

The authors use panel data of 25,960 firm-year observations from a sample of Chinese firms. The carbon emission data for each Chinese city are obtained from the China Emission Accounts and Datasets for Emerging Economies. This paper adopts a multiple regression model to study the impact of carbon emissions on audit fees.

The authors find that firms located in cities with higher carbon emission levels and firms with more carbon emissions are charged, on average, a higher audit fee. This audit fee effect of carbon risk is transmitted by lessened information transparency and elevated financial risk within these firms. This paper shows that auditors consider carbon risk in their audit fee decisions and other factors that could influence audit risk and effort.

This study draws a connection between carbon emissions and audit fees. It is especially relevant due to the increasing importance of environmental factors in the audit risk assessment. In addition, the findings suggest that a firm implementing a proactive environmental strategy benefits the economy and decreases the costs to the firm for services such as auditing.

The increase in population in the world has brought an overpopulation in various parts of the world, with those cities where their countries are developing being most affected, mainly because these usually have corrupt governments that make urban planning difficult in an optimal way. The increase in the construction of urban areas generates problems in the environment due to the increase in carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, and the extraction of natural resources. Therefore, governments must promote urban innovation based on compliance with sustainable development that allows for preserving the ecosystem and the population's quality of life. Urban innovation must incorporate technologies that allow sustainable activities to be carried out efficiently and monitor the progress of environmental regulations.