【摘要】 党的二十届三中全会提出，“加快经济社会发展全面绿色转型”。过去二十年，中国绿色转型呈现出区域经济差距缩小和环境污染下降的绿色协调发展现象。本文以电力为切入点构建理论模型，证明了绿色贸易可促进区域绿色协调发展：绿电替代火电可降低受端污染，改善环境质量；跨区贸易可提高送端产出，缩小区域经济差距。本文利用“西电东送”作为绿电贸易的政策冲击。研究表明，西电东送绿电输电线路每增加一条，送端的经济增速显著提高0.8个百分点，受端的PM_2.5浓度下降2%，整体上缩小了区域经济差距、降低了大气污染。机制分析发现：价格上，西电东送显著缩小区域电价差距；数量上，西电东送促进省际电力贸易，提高送端发电量，降低受端发电量，缩小区域经济差距；结构上，西电东送提高送端绿电发电量，替代受端高污染火电，降低大气污染。本文的研究揭示出绿色贸易在推动经济社会发展全面绿色转型中的重要作用。更多还原

【Abstract】 The Third Plenary Session of the 20 th CPC Central Committee proposed to ramp up the green transition in all areas of economic and social development. To achieve this goal, the first officially released top-level policy blueprint for green transition emphasizes the need to strengthen regional cooperation in green development and to advance coordinated development and collaborative transition in an integrated manner. This means that achieving green transition in all areas requires simultaneously promoting regional economic coordination and green transition.Over the past two decades, a stylized fact of China’s green transition is the emergence of coordinated green development across regions: regional economic disparities gradually narrowed, while overall pollution steadily declined. However, existing theories, such as the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis, the Pollution Haven hypothesis, and the Economic Convergence hypothesis, cannot systematically explain this fact. Our study investigates the theoretical mechanisms behind this phenomenon, addressing new questions raised by China’s practices of green transition, which is of theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically, we demonstrate that green trade can promote coordinated green development across regions. Taking the green electricity trade as an example, we construct a two-region model that characterizes the production of different types of electricity and final goods, and then compare electricity prices, output, and air pollution under scenarios with and without green trade. We prove that, under certain conditions, green electricity trade promotes coordinated green development across regions: substitution of green electricity for thermal power reduces pollution in the electricity-importing region and improves environmental quality, while cross-regional trade boosts output in the electricity-exporting region and narrows regional economic disparity. Thus, this theory provides a new, internally consistent explanation for China’s coordinated green development.Empirically, we use the construction of green electricity transmission lines in the West-to-East Power Transmission program as a policy shock to identify the causal effect of green trade on coordinated green development across regions. The empirical analysis shows that each additional green electricity transmission line significantly accelerates the GDP growth rate of exporting provincial-level regions（hereinafter referred to as provinces） by about 0.8 percentage points, while reducing the levels of PM_2.5 in importing provinces by 2%. Overall, as the number of green electricity transmission lines increases, interprovincial economic disparities shrink, and overall air quality improves. We further explore the mechanisms and find（1） a price effect, whereby the transmission lines reduce electricity prices in importing provinces and narrows the east-west price gap;（2） a quantity effect, as the transmission lines increase power generation in exporting provinces while reducing it in importing provinces through electricity trade, thereby explaining the narrowing economic gap; and（3） a structural effect, as the transmission lines raise the shares of green power and the power industry in exporting provinces while reducing the shares of thermal power generation, coal consumption, and the power industry in importing provinces, thereby explaining the overall decline in air pollution.These findings highlight the critical role of green trade in advancing the green transition in all areas of economic and social development. The power sector is a key arena for achieving this transition. In this regard, we propose two policy recommendations. First, it is crucial to advance the “dual priorities” in the development of the power sector and fully tap into green power resources. Given China’s vast territory and favorable green resource endowment, effective and more investment in new energy infrastructure should be prioritized to provide sufficient green inputs for the green transition. Second, efforts should be made to accelerate the establishment of a unified national electricity market to promote crossregional green electricity trade. Since spatial mismatches exist between green electricity supply and demand, it is recommended to expedite the development of a national electricity market system and advance the opening of cross-regional electricity markets, thereby fully unleashing the economic and environmental benefits of green electricity trade.Our contributions are as follows. First, we explore the theoretical mechanisms underlying China’s coordinated green development from the new perspective of cross-regional green trade, thereby expanding the research frontier on green transition. Second, within the Chinese context, we examine the impact of interprovincial green electricity trade on green transition and its mechanisms, extending the scope of green trade research from the international to the domestic level. Third, by focusing on the green electricity transmission lines of the West-to-East Power Transmission program, we reveal the positive role of new infrastructure in facilitating green trade.更多还原