The Carbon Reduction Effect of Heterogeneous Environmental Regulation Tools

Against the backdrop of the "double carbon" goals, reducing the carbon intensi-ty of heavy-polluting enterprises with high energy consumption and carbon emis-sions has become crucial. As an important policy tool to guide green and low-carbon development, environmental regulation policies are indispensable for governing enterprise carbon intensity. This study focuses on two hetero-ge-neous environmental regulation tools—environmental subsidies and pollu-tion discharge fees—and selects 8,258 sample observations of Chinese listed compa-nies from 2011 to 2021 as the research object. The findings show that: Environ-mental subsidy policies can significantly reduce the carbon intensity of heavy-polluting enterprises, while pollution discharge fees exacerbate enter-prise carbon intensity to a certain extent.The research conclusions are of great signif-icance for improving environmental regulation policies and guiding heavy-polluting enterprises to save energy and reduce emissions, providing a realization path for achieving the carbon neutrality goal by 2060.