Research of Environmental Regulation, Technical Progress and the Development of Shale Gas Industry—A Case Study of the USA

Abstract

Shale gas industry has a broad prospect in China. To learn from the shale gas industry in the USA, this paper compared China with the USA in the aspects of production, environmental regulation and technical progress of shale gas industry. Furthermore, we took American shale gas industry as an example in the part of empirical research, in order to study the relationship among environmental regulation, technical progress and industrial development of shale gas innovatively. We find that environmental regulation affects the shale gas production, and it also has indirect effect on production through technical progress. The conclusions provide valuable lessons to Chinese shale gas industry.