Research On Energy Efficiency Of China

It's a key step to improve China's energy efficiency to cope with the seriously energy shortage and environmental issue. However, it's necessary to answer the following three essential questions: "what's energy efficiency?" "How about China's energy efficiency?" and "what's the driving forces behind the energy efficiency?"This dissertation is an empirical analysis driven by practical problem. Combined with the economic growth theory, productivity theory and environmental economic theory, the energy efficiency model under total-factor productivity framework is constructed by the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This indicator can be used to evaluate the relative utilization efficiency score during the production process for different Decision Making Units (DMU). Then the econometric model which incorporates explanation variables can be employed to measure each one's contribution to the diversity of the energy efficiency.Chapter 2 & 3 are aim to answer "what is energy efficiency". Plenty of literatures are reviewed in the light of the evolvement from single-factor productivity to total-factor productivity framework in Chapter 2. To conquer that shortage of energy productivity indicators in previous studies, three energy efficiency models under total-factor productivity framework are established in Chapter 3 to be used in the followed parts.Is China's energy efficiency high or low? And why? That is the main purpose of Chapter 4. By using the input and output dataset cross 96 countries from 1980 to 2003, each country's total-factor energy technical efficiency score is measured and the international comparison indicated that China lags behind most of other countries. One main reason for China's energy inefficiency is the scale inefficiency in the national wide, which result from the regional competition and market segmentation under the arrangement of decentralized fiscal institution, as well as the excessive capital deepening during the process of industrialization. Moreover, to investigate the role of allocation efficiency, a special dataset which incorporate the price/cost information cross 35 countries from 1998 to 2003 is employed in Chapter 5. The evaluation of total-factor energy economic efficiency for each country also confirms that China's energy inefficiency; however the allocation inefficiency, which results from the lower price for energy product in China, is another reason for China's energy inefficiency.Is there great difference of energy efficiency among different regions in China? And why? Chapter 6 is aim at this issue to study the provincial energy efficiency. A panel data cross 29 provinces from 1995 to 2007 is used to assess the total-factor energy relative efficiency. The comparison result shows that the East region, which includes the most developed provinces, is most efficient, the West region, which involves the most undeveloped provinces, lags behind the East and Middle region. The differences of industrial structure, property assignment, capital per labor, as well as energy structure are the driving force behind the regional energy efficiency difference. In addition, to control the great geographical impact, the Chapter 7 choose the Zhejiang province to study the determinant factors of the energy efficiency, the empirical analysis for 11 cities from 1999 to 2006 suggest that the scale of industrial sector , technology level , variation of foreign investment and ICT also exert great influence on the energy efficiency.Furthermore, the Chapter 8 studies the feasibility of China's energy conservation & emission reduction target and the possible output loss. Based on the input, GDP and industrial SO₂ emission data cross 29 provinces from 2005 to 2007, the energy conservation potential and the emission reduction potential for each province are estimated and aggregate to the national wide level, the scenario analysis indicate that even 10% of energy conservation & emission reduction potential is accomplished, the mandatory target in the "eleventh five-year planning" can be achieved. In the meanwhile, the estimation of potential output loss is about 0.36% of real output, which is affordable for China's growth.