In the face of achieving the overall goal of emission peak and carbon neutrality, strengthening green technology transfer and environmental regulation is the key to narrowing the green technology gap and green development chasm between regions. This paper integrates green technology transfer, environmental regulation, and the green development chasm into one model, and analyzes the mechanism by which green technology transfer and environmental regulation impact the green development chasm. An empirical test was conducted by employing green technology transfer patent and panel data of the Yangtze River Delta from 2005–2019. The results are as follows: (1) Although the green development chasm still exists in the Yangtze River Delta, green technology transfer and environmental regulation have a positive impact on narrowing the regional green development chasm. Especially, the superposition of green technology transfer and environmental regulation can effectively make up for the lack of government and market regulation, and significantly promote the narrowing of the green development chasm. (2) Regional heterogeneity exists and developed regions can achieve the goal of narrowing the green development chasm by relying on green technology transfer or environmental regulation, while less developed regions must rely on the synergy of two dimensions. Thus, the coordination of green technology transfer and environmental regulation must be strengthened. Based on the above research, the main contributions of this paper are to analyze the theoretical mechanism of green technology transfer, environmental regulation, and regional green development chasm, to provide a theoretical and empirical basis for realizing the overall goal of regional green development, and suggestions for optimizing China’s current policies.

This study attempts to determine whether there is a spatial correlation between electricity generation and economic scale promoting coordinated development in Africa. We explore the spatial similarity and gray correlation degree between electricity generation and economic scale in Africa since the 21st century by adopting barycenter coupling and Gray Correlation Analysis method. We argue that there is a strong correlation between electricity generation and economic scale. Our findings indicate a significant spatial difference in electricity generation, mainly concentrated in Northern and Southern Africa. Furthermore, spatial pattern remains largely consistent over time, mirroring trends observed at the economic scale. Electricity generation and economic scale were concentrated in six countries- South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco, and Libya- and did not change significantly over time. A correlation analysis between electricity generation and the economic scale further confirmed this, with a linear coefficient of 0.907. Both the gravity centers of economic scale and electricity generation in Africa move farther in the north-south direction than in the East-West direction, with the former showing a Southwest-Northeast-Southwest track feature and the latter a Northeast-Southwest track feature. The spatial distribution of the gravity centers of electricity generation and the gravity centers of the economic scale in Africa are highly consistent; electricity generation highly correlates with the economic scale, consistent with the research conclusion obtained by the Gray Correlation Analysis method. This study suggests the coordinated development of electricity generation and economic scales in various African countries.