中国低碳城市试点的政策设计逻辑

政策试点是中国国家治理策略体系的重要组成部分,是中国政府遵循“由点到面”逻辑以试验手段制定政策的一种常规性工作方法。低碳城市试点是中国应对气候变化战略的重要组成部分,通过选择不同类型、不同发展阶段、不同资源禀赋的地区开展试点,探索经济增长与碳排放脱钩的模式。现有文献侧重低碳城市建设的内涵、建设模式与路径、温室气体的核算方法、政策手段、峰值研究与达峰路径、效果评估等,有力地支持了低碳城市建设决策,但对于低碳城市试点的政策设计鲜有涉及。本文从政策过程理论、央地关系两个视角,结合府际学习与竞争关系,建构了中国低碳城市政策“试点–扩散”机制与政府行为的分析框架。中国的低碳城市试点具有探索型开拓性、综合型专业性、授权型自主性的特点,结合三批低碳城市试点的文件要求和实践进展,从政策试点的选点、设计、执行、监督和评估五个方面对于中国低碳城市试点进行了系统的梳理分析。相较于经济领域的其他政策试点,低碳城市政策试点具有弱激励弱约束的政策环境。地方政府基于自身的学习能力和领导力,在政策创新方面表现出争先、自主、效仿和守成四种行为特征,并以杭州、深圳、镇江、成都四个表率城市做了实证。政策“试点-扩散”的过程从本质上讲是中国政策创新与扩散的过程,可能在现实中需要往复多次进行,中国已陆续开展的三批低碳城市试点工作就遵循这样的政策逻辑。试点的意义是试出问题、解决问题、积累经验。从前三批试点城市评估结果来看,试点城市在低碳发展目标设定、转型路径探索和低碳发展动力转换等方面与社会的预期仍有差距,为此本文提出了推进低碳城市建设的四点建议:一是激发城市低碳发展的内生动力;二是完善低碳城市试点的科学论证机制;三是建立激励与约束并举的长效机制;四是强化市场公平竞争的政策导向。

Policy design logic of low-carbon city pilots in China

Policy pilot programs are an important part of China’s national governance strategy,and it is a common working method for the Chinese government to formulate policies through experiments,following the logic of‘from point to surface’.Low carbon city pilot programs are an important part of China’s climate change strategy.The aim of the pilot schemes is to explore the how to decouple economic growth from carbon emissions by running pilots in a selection of regions of different types,at different development stages and with different resource endowment.Existing literature in this regard mostly focuses on low carbon cities’connotation,development models and paths,greenhouse gas accounting methodology,policy measures,emission peaks,and paths that lead to peaking emissions,and evaluating the effectiveness of low-carbon city development.These strongly support the decision-making in low-carbon city development,but rarely touch upon the logic behind policy designs for low-carbon city pilot programs.This paper approaches the question from two perspectives,the policy process theory,and the relationship between the central government and local governments,while also accounting for the relationships between local governments featuring mutual learning and competition,and constructs a‘pilot-diffusion’mechanism and a framework for analyzing government behaviors in low-carbon cities in China.China’s low-carbon city pilot programs are exploratory and pioneering,comprehensive and professional,and are run independently by local authorities with endorsement from the central government.This paper reviews the requirements set out in the policy documents for the three batches of low-carbon city pilot programs and their progress on the ground,systematically combs and analyzes China’s low-carbon city pilot programs from five aspects:selection,design,implementation,monitoring and evaluation.Compared with other policy pilot programs in the economic field,low-carbon city policy pilots have a policy environment featuring weak incentives and weak constraints.Based on their own learning abilities and leadership,local governments show four different types of behavioral characteristics in terms of policy innovation,namely,pioneering,independent,imitative and conservative.Four cities that are leading the way,including Hangzhou,Shenzhen,Zhenjiang and Chengdu,are used as empirical evidence.The process of running pilot programs,and rolling them out to wider areas if successful,is in essence a process of policy innovation and diffusion,with multiple iterations in reality.China has carried out three batches of low-carbon city pilot programs successively which have followed such a policy logic.The point of running pilots is to identify problems through trials,solve the problems and accumulate experience.From the evaluation results of the first three batches of pilot cities,we can see that they still fall short of the expectations of the society in terms of setting goals,exploring a path for transformation and shifting to the right drivers for low-carbon development.Therefore,this paper puts forward four suggestions for promoting the development of low-carbon cities:to spur the endogenous driver of low-carbon city development;to improve the mechanism for scientific debate about low-carbon cities;to establish a long-term mechanism of incentives and constraints;and to strengthen the policy guidance for fair market competition.