Promoting or inhibiting? New-type urbanization and urban carbon emissions efficiency in China

Urban carbon emissions lead to increases in global carbon emissions; consequently, meeting targets for low carbon emissions is a difficult problem in the context of urbanization. Improving urban carbon emissions efficiency (UCEE) in the new-type urbanization (NTU) process is key to reducing urban carbon and enhancing sustainable urban development. However, the potential of NTU in facilitating improved UCEE remains unclear. Thus, we investigated the effect and transmission mechanisms of NTU on UCEE in China. A set of spatial econometric models was used, with panel data from 283 cities across China from 2006 to 2019. The results showed that NTU significantly promoted the improvement of UCEE, and UCEE improved strongly during the later stage of NTU construction. In China's central and western cities, large cities, and non-natural resource–based cities, the promotion effect of NTU on UCEE was more significant. Overall, the economic agglomeration effect had the most significant influence, followed by the government leading effect and resource allocation effect. Moreover, the NTU pilot policies of civilized city, low-carbon city, innovative city, smart city, and green finance city significantly promoted the improvement of UCEE. These findings provide theoretical and empirical evidence for the effective achievement of the “dual carbon” goal with respect to NTU in China.