Impact of Carbon Emissions Trading Policies on the Level of Green Development of Cities

As a product of the international political game, the carbon emissions trading system, which trades carbon emission rights as physical goods through the market mechanism, is of great significance in helping China to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality at an early date. Taking the launch of China's carbon emissions trading policy as a natural experiment, this paper quantitatively analyses the impact of carbon emissions trading on the green development level of each prefecture-level city based on the carbon emissions performance data before and after the implementation of carbon emissions trading in 281 prefecture-level cities in China from 2010 to 2020 by using a double-difference model. The results of the study show that the carbon emissions trading policy has a positive impact on improving the green development level of prefecture-level cities. Therefore, it is important to further improve the carbon emissions trading system and take multiple measures to promote the transformation of energy consumption structure.