A study of environmental regulation, technological innovation, and energy consumption in China based on spatial econometric models and panel threshold models.

Under different technological innovation modes, regional energy consumption may have spatial heterogeneity. Spatial heterogeneity complicates the nexus between environmental regulation and energy consumption. Traditional spatial homogeneity analysis is hard to describe the nonlinear nexus between them. Based on the data of 30 provinces in China from 2007 to 2017, this paper employs the spatial econometric method and the nonlinear econometric method to investigate the spatial effects and nonlinearity of energy consumption, respectively. The results display that under the current level of economic development, per capita energy consumption has a significant spatial spillover effect. Environmental regulation promotes regional per capita energy consumption in the short term. On the contrary, the technological effect of environmental regulation has significantly reduced Chinese per capita energy consumption. Therefore, energy policy should be tailored to local conditions, and policymakers can strengthen the environmental regulatory system and encourage enterprises to implement green technology innovation.