Research On Regional Differences Evolution Trends And Influencing Factors Of Energy Consumption In China

Energy crisis and environmental problems are becoming increasingly serious. After commitment to carbon emission reduction targets, the energy conservation requirements are more urgent. In order to reflect the ―common but differentiated‖ responsibility, energy conservation targets with regional differentiation are implemented in the period of ―Twelfth Five Year Plan‖. To more deeply to understand the problems that how to determine the total energy conservation targets and how to distribute the targets, the regional differences on energy consumption and the factors of energy consumption need to be studied. The work done in this paper as followings:(1)Based on description of the statistical characteristics in energy consumption, with decoupling model and from three levels including nation, regions and provinces, the dependence of economic growth on energy consumption is analyzed from 1986 to 2011. Through Theil index, the regional differences evolution trends of energy consumption are studied. In two ways of regional division, that are three regions and regions with different affluence, the regional differences of similarity between energy consumption and economic growth, and industrial added value, and population are comparatively analyzed. The results show that the degree of similarity between energy consumption and population is growing strong, meaning that the energy conservation targets of energy consumption per capita are more reasonable in line with statistical law. The western region and middle income region are the most major contributions to the difference respectively. The problem of energy conservation targets component allocation is researched by Theil index.(2)Based on panel-STIRPAT model, the influencing relationships and regional differences from population, affluence, technology and the square of affluence to energy consumption are studied. The results show that population has the largest influence on the eastern region. The increase of affluence from central and western regions will lead to more percentage of energy consumption. The elastic values of technology are close, with the largest one in eastern region. The elastic values of the square of affluence are negative. At 5% significant level, the elastic value is established in eastern region, meaning an inverted U curve. The curves exist in the other two regions at 10% significant level.(3)VAR model, impulse response function and variance decomposition are used to analyze the relationship between energy consumption and industrialization and the one from energy consumption and urbanization. Industrial added value and industrial proportion are used to characterize industrialization. And the city population and the proportion of city population are used to characterize urbanization. On the basis of STIRPAT model, a comprehensive model with multiple factors is established. According to the results from variance decomposition, city population, industrial added value, industrial proportion and proportion of city population are added to the model one by one. The results show that the four variables of population, affluence, energy intensity and industrial added value are significant established in three regions. The city population and industrial proportion are also significant in eastern region, but not significant in the others. The regional differences of factors from three regions are studied comparatively.