Impacts of environmental regulations on green economic growth in China: New guidelines regarding renewable energy and energy efficiency

As the world's largest energy consuming country, it is important to study the mechanisms of improving renewable energy and energy efficiency to achieve green economic growth in China and globally. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of environmental regulations on green economic growth and renewable energy development in China, respectively. First, this study measures the level of green economic growth in Chinese cities by the Metafrontier-Global-SBM super-efficient data envelopment analysis (DEA) model from the perspective of energy efficiency. And the environmental regulation intensity was measured using an improved fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. Second, a spatial econometric model based on longitudinal data was constructed to examine the non-linear effects of environmental regulations on green economic growth and its spatial spillover and feedback effects. The results indicated a U-shaped non-linear effect of energy efficiency-related environmental regulation on green economic growth as well as a spatial spillover effect and spatial feedback effect. Finally, the impact of environmental regulation on renewable energy development was investigated. The results show that renewable energy development, an important component of green economic growth, is equally dependent on the implementation of environmental regulation policies and that environmental regulation makes a significant contribution to renewable energy development. The findings of this paper provide a basis for the realization of green economic growth and the formulation of renewable energy policies in China.