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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Moving Toward Carbon Neutrality in China:
The Role of Human Capital in Reducing
Carbon Intensity
1
School of Education, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 102401, China
Submission date: 2024-12-20
Final revision date: 2025-03-07
Acceptance date: 2025-03-17
Online publication date: 2025-04-18
Publication date: 2026-04-21
Corresponding author
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2026;35(2):2713-2726
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
With the looming global warming crisis, the question of how to achieve carbon neutrality
is becoming an important issue confronting many countries. In this study, we use modern economic
growth theory to investigate the impact of education on carbon intensity in China’s 30 provinces from
2000 to 2021. On this basis, a fixed effect model, threshold model, and spatial Durbin model are used
to analyze the influence mechanism and spatial effect. The results show that education significantly
reduces carbon intensity; improving education reduces carbon intensity by upgrading industrial
structure, enhancing green technology innovation, and upgrading consumption structure; the carbon
intensity reduction effect of education is nonlinear and gradually increases with increasing levels
of industrial structure upgrading, accelerating green technology innovation, and upgrading consumption
structure; and education reduces carbon intensity mainly through the spillover effect. The negative
spillover effects in provinces with low levels of carbon intensity are significantly greater than the direct
effects, whereas the spillover effects in provinces with high levels of carbon intensity are negative but
not significant.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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