Abstract: Technological progress is the fundamental measure to achieve carbon emission reduction, but different ways of technological progress - innovation and technology introduction, as well as different countries and regions in different ways of technological progress, have different effects on carbon emission reduction. Therefore, this paper divides the way of technological progress into independent innovation and technology introduction, and divides the independent innovation into original innovation and imitation innovation, in order to have a more in-depth study of the relationship between technology progress and carbon emissions by means of a more detailed approach; this paper takes the environmental regulation cost as the threshold variable, and studies the threshold effect of environmental regulation by using the dynamic panel threshold estimation. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: first, the original innovation can′t reduce carbon emissions, but increases carbon emissions, which shows that China′s technological innovation pays more attention to the promotion of efficiency, the degree of innovation is not high, and the indirect effect of innovation is greater than the direct effect, imitation innovation is good for carbon emission reduction, the reason is that imitation innovation is a kind of “following type” innovation; the effect of technology introduction is very small, which shows that our country can′t obtain the most appropriate technology by purchase. Second, in different regions, there are large differences among independent innovation, imitation innovation, and technology introduction in playing a role in carbon emission reduction,therefore, government can′t take “one-size-fits-all” approach in promoting technological progress and making emission reduction policies. Third, original innovation, technology introduction have the threshold effect. When environmental costs reached the threshold, the original innovation and technology introduction began to promote carbon emission reduction. Therefore, we need to consider the different carbon emission reduction effects of different technological progress paths, and choose different incentives, support and regulatory policies.

Key words: carbon emissions, technological progress path, original innovation, imitation innovation, technology introduction