Research On The Impact Of Local Energy Saving And Environmental Protection Expenditure On Energy Efficiency

Under the new normal of economic development,environmental protection has become an important responsibility of local governments.Energy efficiency,as a key indicator to promote the construction of ecological civilization,is a benchmark for measuring the efficiency of social resources.As the government’s targeted environmental protection budget items,energy saving and environmental protection expenditures can most directly reflect the government’s investment and guidance in environmental protection,take responsibility for the improvement of energy efficiency and have the right to regulate the use of resources.Studying the relationship between the two is of reference significance for the formulation of government environmental protection expenditure policies.This paper uses the data of 203 prefecture-level cities from 2007 to 2017 as a sample,and studies the influence mechanism and effect of government expenditure on energy saving and environmental protection on single-factor energy utilization by using the dual fixed effect model.Research finds that energy saving and environmental protection expenditures promote energy efficiency.In the test of influence mechanism,the mediation effect model was used to verify the mediation effect of technological innovation between fiscal environmental protection expenditure and energy efficiency,accounting for 28.9% of the total effect of environmental protection expenditure on energy efficiency.In the heterogeneity analysis,the benchmark model regression verifies that the energy-saving effect of environmental protection expenditure in industrial bases is greater than that of non-industrial bases,and the effect of inland cities is greater than that of coastal cities;the threshold effect model is also used to analyze the level of regional economic development and external The interval effect of the degree of openness found that when the per capita GDP is less than 22,432 yuan,due to the low industrialization structure of the initial development of the society,the increased fiscal expenditure may cause income pressure to allow producers to obtain income through excessive development of energy,which inhibits energy efficiency.;And when the per capita GDP crosses the threshold of 22,432 yuan,energy saving and environmental protection expenditures can always have a positive effect on energy efficiency,and this effect increases significantly after crossing the second threshold of 51,213 yuan,and income increases The coming environmental awareness has made the guiding effect of government expenditures more obvious.In terms of economic openness,it is estimated that when foreign direct investment accounts for less than 4.31% of the regional GDP,the local energy utilization rate can be improved.However,when the proportion exceeds this value,the impact of environmental protection expenditure on energy efficiency is no longer significant.This reminds the government that excessive introduction of low-end foreign-funded enterprises may limit the effectiveness of policies and is not conducive to improving energy efficiency.To ensure the robustness of the conclusion,this paper also tried to test by replacing the explained variables and finding instrumental variables.After the explained variables were replaced with total factor productivity,the regression was performed;the mean value of environmental protection expenditures in other cities in the same province in the same year was taken as After instrumental variables solve the endogenous problem and other methods,the results are still stable.Finally,according to the analysis conclusion,this paper comes up with some suggestions.Standardizing the budget management of energy saving and environmental protection expenditure,rising the intermediary effect of technological innovation,increasing the fiscal environmental protection investment in high energy consumption areas,and planning energy saving and environmental protection expenditure arrangements according to different economic development stages and openness to the outside world.