Climate governance and industrial ecological transformation

Abstract To deal with the increasing number of climate disasters and the negative impacts of climate change, cities need to improve their climate resilience. This may influence the process of industrial ecological transformation. This paper uses the pilot policy of the climate‐resilient city construction (CRCC) in 2017 as a natural experiment. Using data from 278 cities in China from 2012 to 2021, we use the difference‐in‐differences (DID) model to explore the impact of climate governance on the industrial ecological transformation (IET). The results are as follows. First, climate governance actions can promote the industrial ecological transformation, and this positive effect is still significant after robustness tests. Second, the mechanism suggests that climate‐resilient city construction facilitates the industrial ecological transformation of cities by promoting technological advancement and improving urban energy efficiency. Third, there is obvious heterogeneity in the impact of climate‐resilient city construction on industrial ecological transformation. It has a stronger effect in non‐old industrial bases and central cities. In addition, we further examined the results using the double machine learning model (DML). This paper provides an important reference for improving the regional coordinated development mechanism of climate policies and continuously promoting the climate‐resilient city construction.