Statistical Research On The Effect Of Urban Scale On Energy Efficency

Since the reform and opening up,China's rapid and extensive economic development has consumed a lot of energy,and caused a series of environmental pollution and climate change.In addition to developing new energy and renewable energy,improving energy efficiency is a necessary basis for sustaining sustainable economic development and an effective way to address energy shortages,further climate change and environmental pollution.China's urbanization has been advancing rapidly,the number of cities has been increasing,and the scale of cities has been expanding.The city is the focus of energy saving and emission reduction.The significant regional imbalance of China's economic development level leads to the regional imbalance and spatial differences of energy efficiency.In addition to the general factors that affect energy efficiency,existing research has neglected the impact of agglomeration economy on energy efficiency.Urban scale is the embodiment of the urban population,economic activities and economic factors in the process of urbanization.It is particularly necessary to discuss the impact of urban scale on urban energy efficiency under such circumstances.The specific contents and conclusions of this paper are as follows:The first part introduces the realistic background,puts forward the research significance,summarizes the related research on "the impact of city scale on energy efficiency",clarifies the research content and method,and finally gives the innovation and deficiency of this article.The second part first understands the theoretical basis of urban scale,agglomeration economy and energy efficiency,then clarifies the logical relationship between the above three and finds that urban scale and urban scale gap may affect energy efficiency.Finally,the author analyzes the mechanism and path of urban scale affecting the energy efficiency in detail.In the third part,the statistical analysis of China's energy consumption shows that the total energy consumption is increasing and the energy supply is insufficient.Compared with the developed countries,China's energy consumption intensity is relatively large and regional and spatial differences in energy consumption intensity is significant.The statistical analysis of the distribution of cities in different scale grades shows that there is apparent gathering of China's urban distribution.Overall,the larger the city,the less the number of such kind of cities.The number of cities in the eastern and central regions is significantly higher than that in the west,and medium and above cities are mainly concentrated in the eastern and central regions.In the fourth part,as modeled by the SFA model proposed by Battese and Coelli(1995),the energy efficiency based on the Shephard energy distance function is defined.The author constructs the total factor energy efficiency SFA model,uses multi-channel data to calculate the total factor energy efficiency of China's 29 provinces(municipalities,autonomous regions)and 224 prefecture-level cities from 2001 to 2014,and analyzes their distribution characteristics and trends.It is found that provincial energy efficiency and urban energy efficiency show a U-shaped trajectory during the sample period,the provincial energy efficiency has obvious regional differences,and there may be a non-linear realationship between urban scale and urban energy efficiency.In the fifth part,based on the mechanism of urban scale affecting energy efficiency,the author proposes the hypothesis that there may exist a U-shaped relationship between urban scale and urban energy efficiency,and constructs a corresponding metrological model.Then an empirical test is carried out to find that the urban population size and urban energy efficiency shows a U-shaped relationship and the urban population size corresponding to the lowest point of U-shaped curve is about 3 million;In the eastern regions,the urban population size is in the form of U-shaped relationship with the urban energy efficiency,whereas in the central and western regions there is a significant negative correlation between the city population size and the urban energy efficiency.In the sixth part,the author analyzes how the agglomeration economy promotes the formation of urban scale gap and the mechanism of urban scale gap affecting energy efficiency from the aspects of sharing intermediate inputs,knowledge spillovers promoting innovation,reasonable matching or substitution of relevant elements and imperfect competition.Then the author derives the mathematical model of economy agglomeration affecting energy efficiency,constructs a econometric model and use FGLS estimates to find that the increase of the urban scale gap will help to improve the energy efficiency at the provincial level.Finally,the robustness test is carried out to find that the influence direction and the significance of each explanatory variable keeps unchanged.In the seventh part,the author elaborates the main conclusions of this paper,puts forward some suggestions on how to construct a reasonable city scale system,save energy and reduce emission,and looks forward to the relevant issues to be further explored.Based on the above findings,the following policy recommendations can be obtained:(1)To follow the principle of regional differences,targeted further promoting energy conservation work,and promote social and economic green sustainable development;(2)To increase the size of the city and improve the comprehensive utilization of energy efficiency(3)To build a reasonable system of urban scale,and play the city's agglomeration economic effects and synergies;(4)To reform the current household registration system and relax the restrictions on the movement of population and economic factors that may hinder agglomeration.Based on previous studies,this paper seeks to innovate in the following three aspects:(1)Innovation of energy efficiency measurement.This paper puts forward the energy efficiency which separates the inefficiency of labor and capital and truly reflects the efficiency of energy input elements.The perpetual inventory method is used to estimate the capital stock of the cities in China from 2001 to 2014.Therefore,the credibility of the city's energy efficiency measurement results has been improved.(2)Research perspective innovation.Most of the existing studies consider the impact of local economic factors or institutional policies on energy efficiency.Based on the perspective of agglomeration economy,this paper considers the impact of urban scale on energy efficiency,and this research perspective has some novelty.(3)To examine the non-linear relationship between urban scale and urban energy efficiency.Most of the existing literatures only focus on the relationship between urban scale and productivity.This paper analyzes and examines the U-shaped relationship between urban scale and urban energy efficiency.