Environmental Regulation, Energy Productivity And Economic Growth In China

The contradiction among population, resources, environment and development isthe problem we people have to face. The sustainable development of ecnomy andsociety under many constraints always draw schalars’ attention, which give birth to newscientific research orientation, such as energy economics, envirlnment economics anddevelopment economics, etc. which are enriching the throreticaly theory ofdevelopment development. For a long time, the conception of prioritizing thedevelopment, make China to face the problems brought about by energy deficiency,environmental pollution. Since90s of last century, the relevant research of energyexploration and rational utilization, environmental protection, recycling economy, etc.are constantly emerging. Exploring the way to optimize energy consumption, increaseenergy productivity, regulate environment, decrease pollution emission, and reorganizeindustrial structure inorder to boost sustainable development are the key points of thoserelevant researches, which also are keypoints of this thesis.Energy and environment are the double constraint to economic development,environment. The reversed mechanism of the influence of environment regulation overenergy consumption and economy development, the influence of energy control overeconomic development, will promote the increase of energy productivity and thetransformation of economy development model. Although the relevant policies aboutcontrol of overall volume of energy have been introduced, this research regards theincrease of energy productivy as the key to energy utilization. The utilization of energywill inevitably bring about pollution, and bad influence on social overall utility. Toincrease energy effectiveness with the help of reversed mechanism of environmentalregulation, we must take the advantage of new technology application and industrialstructure upgrading. How about the performance under our environmental regulationsystem? How does it affect energy productivity? Does the coupling relationship betweencomprehensive energy effectiveness and economy development? How does thisrelationship affect regional economy development? Whith these questions, this thesisbegin to explore.Chapter1, introduction. Energy deficiency and environmental pollution are the twodifficult problems need to be solved for sustainable development, exploring themechanism of how environment regulation affects energy productivity and ow energy consumption affect economy development, will help to build the model for rationalenergy utilization. These chapters systematically present the background, problems,goals, meaning, the thought of this research and the main content, and summarize themethodology and innovation.Chapter2, theories reference and literature review. This chapter explainsenvironment regulation and energy productivity, and summarizes relevant theoreticalbase about energy economy, environment economy, and economic growth, regulatoryand so on. Furthermore, literature relevant to this subject has been analyzed. Then, thebasic theoretical framework and model of environment-energy-economy have beenbuilt.Chapter3. Chinese environment regulation system and the assessment ofregulatory performance. This chapter presents and discusses the evolution of Chineseenvironment regulation system from the perspective of institution evolution, andpresents the change trend of environmental regulation assessment from the perspectiveof environmental regulation efficiency. Our environmental regulation systemexperiences many periods: starting period, newly established period, adjustment period,establishment period, developing period, perfection period in sequence, then explain thepresent environmental regulation system from three aspects: institution setting,institution structure and regulatory tool. Based on the design of Chinese environmentalregulation performance assessment system, this these use the radial super efficiencyDEA model to calculate the efficiency of Chinese environmental regulation, the resultreveals there are big differences in efficiency among different province, regionalenvironmental regulation efficiency take on the appearance of convergent tendency.Chapter4. The research on how environment regulation affects energy productivity.Based on directional distance function, this chapter calculates Chinese total factorenergy efficiency under two condition, then calculate the influence of invironmentregulation on total factor energy efficiency, especially different influence in east, middleand west area in China by using limited dependent variable Tobit model. The resultsshow that by introducing environmental factor, economic efficiency loss has beenbrought about, and there are differences among total factor energy efficiency. Theempirical test of how environment regulation affects total factor energy efficiencyshows that the influences of different variables of environment regulation on total factorenergy efficiency reveals different character. To reflect the influences of each index onenergy efficiency, this research divides the indexes of environment regulation into4 catologues, indexes in different quadrant have significant differences in the aspect ofimproving total factor energy efficiency.Chapter5. the coupling relationship test on variation of energy productivity andeconomic growth. Based on the theory of decoupling and coupling, this chapter verifysthe coupling relationship between energy consumption and economic growth, theresearch finds that, in different periods, the coupling relationship among the totalamount of energy consumption and energy efficiency and economic growth varys alittle. Based on panel cointegration and unit root test, this research discusses the longand short period relationship between energy consumption and economic growth,research indicates there might be a sustainable and stable equilibrium relationshipbetween energy consumption and economic growth, and there might be not obviouscorrelation between total amount of energy consumption and energy consumptionefficiency, while the increase of GDP can boost energy efficiency. In short period, thereis positive coorelation between energy consumption and GDP, while negativecorrelation between energy efficiency and total amount of energy consumption.Chapter6. empirical research of the coordinated development of energyproductivity and regional economy. Through input oriented DEA model, this chaptercalculates Chinese total factor energy efficiency(TFEE) as a whole and regional TFEE,and through instrumental variables method, difference GMM and system GMM, thischapter empirically analyzes the influence of TFEE on Chinese economic growthconvergence, with the method of rectifying deviations and LSDV, the differences amongthe Club Convergence influences of energy efficiency and other factors on economicgrowth. The results find that most provinces with low energy efficiency lie in the westarea, in line with echelon distribution。 The empirical analysis of convergencerelationship between energy efficiency and Chinese economic growth indicates thatconditional convergence exists in China as a whole, and Club convergence exists in theeast, middle and west area, and the middle area has the fastest convergence speed,moreover, the effect of energy efficiency to promote economic growth in east area ismost significant.Chaper7, the coordinated and sustainable developing institutional design ofChinese environment-energy-economy. Based on the empirical results, the policies andsystem design for energy saving and emission reducing have been summarized,crystallizing guiding thought, basic principles of sustainable development ofenvironment–energy-economy, then Chinese energy exploring and utilizing policy, energy saving and emission reducing policy, and advices on sustainable economicgrowth have been designed respectively.This research follows the thought of “question raising, theoretically requirement,empirical test, policy design, circling three theme of environment regulation, energyproductivity and economic growth, according to the vslue orientation of comprehensive,coordinated and sustainable development, constructing theory framework of energy,environment and economy, two reversed mechanisms of how environment boosteconomy and energy, how energy boosts economic growth. This research takes China assample, carrys out empirical research from three levels of environment regulationperformance, the influence of environment on energy, the influence of environment oneconomy, and the influenceof energy on economy, how constrained mechanism affectseconomic growth from many perspectives. Combining this research with significantnational development strategy, based on Chinese economic development practice,reality research and reality prove, exploring political path to boost coordinated andsustainable development of environment, energy and economy.