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This paper analyzes the impact of technology innovation on capacity utilization of enterprises located in the Yangtze River Economic Belt through logic reasoning and empirical modeling. Our analysis shows that the mechanism of how technology innovation affects capacity utilization is that the former promotes the latter through meeting market demand, improving production and management efficiency, and optimizing industrial structures. Our empirical results indicate that the influence of technology innovation on the capacity utilization of enterprises in the Yangtze River Economic Belt evidently possesses positive “U” characteristics. Compared with the upstream and downstream regions of the river, the technology innovation of enterprises in the middle reaches can break the U-shaped inflection point earlier. Compared with light industrial enterprises, heavy industrial enterprises can also break the U-shaped inflection point earlier. Compared with non-overcapacity enterprises, those with overcapacity can break the U-shaped inflection point earlier. The technology innovation of non-state-owned enterprises has obvious positive “U” characteristics in the impact of capacity utilization, while the technology innovation of state-owned enterprises has no significant impact on capacity utilization.

This study examines how the low-carbon pilot city policy (LCPCP) affects energy efficiency from the angles of green technology innovation and upgrading industrial structure by using panel data collected from Chinese cities between 2007 and 2019. The research results include: (1) Based on the time-varying difference-in-differences method, LCPCP has significantly improved energy efficiency, while such results remain significant after replacing the method of measuring the dependent variable and testing with the placebo test and the method of PSM-DID. (2) The heterogeneity analysis shows that compared to resource-based cities (RBC), LCPCP has a greater impact in non-resource-based cities (NRBC). Compared to the Central regions (CR) and Western regions (WR), LCPCP has a stronger impact in the Eastern region (ER). (3) A mechanism inspection shows that LCPCP can promote energy efficiency through both upgrading industrial structure and green technology innovation. LCPCP is of great importance for improving energy efficiency.