Impacts of the West-East Gas Pipeline Project on energy conservation and emission reduction: empirical evidence from Hubei province in Central China.

The extensive use of natural gas provides a new approach to low carbonization of the structure of primary energy sources, as well as reduces the peak in carbon emissions before fossil fuels are completely replaced by clean energy. To explore the impact of the West-East Gas Pipeline Project (WEGPP) on energy conservation and emission reduction in Chinese inland areas, the effects of policy intervention on the socio-economic development in Hubei province are preliminary investigated in this paper. The causal inference of multi-bandwidth and multi-core analysis is carried out using regression discontinuity design (RDD), and the core conclusion of the counterfactual analysis is proven to be robust based on the synthetic control method. The results show that the transportation of natural gas from Western China to Hubei province can reduce the intensity of carbon emissions, demonstrating that it is an effective substitution to low-carbon energy. The WEGPP not only can meet the demands of a large number of energy shortages caused by the rise of the manufacturing industry, but also can solve the technique bottleneck of energy consumption in Central and Eastern China. The WEGPP has ensured the coordinated development in Western, Central, and Eastern China, achieving and maintaining a high and stable economic growth rate in China. These results have significant implications for making policies of energy conservation and emission reduction in a considerable number of gas-importing provinces in Central China.