Green Tax Policy, Environmental Decentralization and Energy Consumption: Evidence from China

China’s huge energy consumption has caused a series of environmental problems, and taxation is an effective way of regulating energy use. Green tax policy can be divided into narrow sense and broad sense according to its circumscription. Studying the impact of different ranges of green taxation policies on energy consumption is of great significance for improving taxation policies to reduce energy consumption. Based on the government’s responsibility for policy implementation and supervision, it is necessary to introduce local government environmental decentralization to explore the role of government actions in it. Taking the panel data of 30 provinces (cities, districts) in China from 2007 to 2016 as the research sample, using the system GMM model, empirically analyze the impact of broad and narrow green taxation and government environmental decentralization on energy consumption and energy efficiency, the results shows: 1) The narrow green tax policy can significantly reduce energy consumption and promote energy efficiency. 2) Broad green taxation policy can significantly increase energy consumption and reduce energy efficiency. 3) Whether under the broad or narrow green taxation policy, the increase in environmental decentralization of local governments will significantly reduce the amount of energy consumption and improve energy efficiency.