Research On The Consistency Of Energy Conservation And Environmental Protection In China's Economic Development

Energy conservation and environmental protection are two basic footholds for practicing China's green development concept.If energy is saved but not environmentally friendly,it will lead to a deterioration of the natural environment and damage the welfare of the public.If it is environmentally friendly but not energy-saving,it will not only lead to over-discharge of greenhouse gases,but also threaten national energy security.Whether energy conservation and environmental protection can be coordinated is related to the sustainable development of China's economy.Identify and judge whether energy conservation and environmental protection are coordinated in the process of industrialization.It is of great significance to address the problems in green development in a targeted manner.Based on the theory of scarcity of energy and environment,environmental externality theory,Pareto optimal theory,DEA theory,sustainable development theory,and green development concept,this paper studies the inter-provincial energy conservation and environmental protection consistency in China.The main contents and conclusions of the study are as follows:(1)Construct an industrial structural characteristic index and an inter-provincial economic share characteristic index for energy consumption,the industrial structural characteristic index of environmental pollutant discharge and the provincial economic share characteristic index are used to analyze the path dependence characteristics of economic-energy-environment system structural change.It is found that industrial structure changes are conducive to energy conservation,but the effects of different environmental pollutants have a large difference.Changes in the structure of the industrial sector have led to strong pollution effects of chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen emissions.Changes in the structure of the industrial sector are conducive to the reduction of sulfur dioxide and smoke dust structure.The change in the inter-provincial economic share has increased the energy burden,and the energy effects of changes in the inter-provincial economic share have significant regional differences.The imbalance in inter-provincial economic development has increased the environmental pollution effect.Energy regulation affects the economic structure by regulating the production,structure,and energy sales prices of energy production.Environmental regulation affects economic development by influencing microenterprise behavioral decisions.(2)In the context of divesting the impact of economic growth,based on the nonradial directional distance function,the energy efficiency of all factors,the environmental efficiency of all factors,and the efficiency of environmental protection and environmental protection of all factors are defined and calculated.Based on this,the conditions for determining energy conservation and environmental protection are proposed.And judge the consistency of China's provincial energy conservation and environmental protection from 2001 to 2016.At the same time,in order to investigate whether the clean structure of energy consumption will affect the total factor efficiency measurement value,the energy input will be included in the calculation process in two ways,one is based on the total energy consumption,the other is to divide energy into non-clean energy and clean energy according to the emission intensity of pollutants in the energy use process.Found that when energy is used as an input element of the DEA efficiency model,regardless of the energy consumption structure,it will result in an underestimation of the energy efficiency,environmental efficiency,energy conservation and environmental efficiency of all factors.The increase in the proportion of clean energy is conducive to energy conservation and environmental protection.The phenomenon of energy saving and environmental imbalance(295 provinces)is more common than high energy consumption and high pollution(75 provinces).The imbalance between energy conservation and environmental protection is due to the fact that the proportion of clean energy consumption is not high,and on the other hand,the focus of production on energy conservation is greater than that of environmental protection.(3)Under the realistic situation of economic green low carbon growth,the groupfrontier and meta-frontier DEA model,the global DEA model are used to calculate the energy efficiency,environmental efficiency and their respective growth indexes under the framework of economic green low carbon growth based on the non-radial directional distance function.Based on this,the criteria for the static consistency and dynamic consistency of energy conservation and environmental protection under the framework of economic green low carbon growth are proposed,and an empirical analysis is made using the inter-provincial data of China from 2001 to 2016.It is found that in the context of economic green and low-carbon growth,high energy consumption and high pollution are still relatively serious.The gap between environmental efficiency and energy efficiency is constantly fluctuating and has significant regional characteristics.The green development level in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River,the southwestern region,and the northwestern region is lower than the national average.The proportion of energy-saving and environmental protection imbalances and highenergy-consumption and high-pollution provinces in the eight regions is over 60%(48.33% in the northern coastal areas).In particular,the number of provinces with positive growth in green low-carbon total factor productivity in each region exceeds the number of provinces in which energy conservation and environmental protection dynamics are consistent.It shows that the phenomenon of sacrificing resource environment for economic growth is still widespread and needs to be corrected.Improvements in efficiency and changes in technological progress have caused fluctuations in the energy efficiency index or environmental efficiency index.And become a decisive factor in the dynamic consistency of energy conservation and environmental protection.Technological advancement is the ultimate driver of rapid growth in energy efficiency and environmental efficiency.Economic growth,energy conservation,and environmental protection all have significant technological gaps in the provincial average,and the potential for improvement is large.(4)Identification and analysis of factors affecting the achievement of energy conservation and environmental coherence.Government behavior is the main factor determining whether energy conservation and environmental protection can be achieved.The proportion of energy conservation and environmental protection expenditure in fiscal budget expenditure,the proportion of industrial pollution control investment in GDP,and the energy consumption per unit GDP are explanatory variables.Relevant indicators such as economic development level,economic structure factor,scientific and technological progress factor and opening-up level are used as control variables,and Probit regression model is used to analyze the influencing factors of energy conservation and environmental protection consistency under the expected output invariant situation.The Heckman two-step method was used to analyze the influencing factors of energy conservation and environmental protection consistency in the context of economic green low carbon growth.The calculation results of the Probit model show that the direction and intensity of the impact of fiscal energy conservation and environmental protection expenditure on energy conservation and environmental protection consistency depend on the level of economic development.On the contrary,the improvement of economic development level and the enhancement of environmental regulation have a negative impact on the realization of energy conservation and environmental protection.The former suggests that the existence of economic growth phenomenon should be sacrificed at the expense of resources and environment.The latter shows that the "Porter effect" of moderate environmental regulation to stimulate technological innovation has not yet appeared.Although the negative impact of the level of opening up on the realization of energy conservation and environmental protection consistency is small,it is enough to warn of the existence of the "pollution paradise" risk.The calculation results of Heckman's two-step method show that under the economic green low-carbon growth scenario,the decision-making unit with effective energy-saving efficiency and environmental protection efficiency has a high probability of energy conservation and environmental protection dynamic consistency.However,when examining the factors affecting energy efficiency,environmental efficiency,and green total factor productivity growth,it is found that the coefficient properties and the significance of the explanatory variables and control variables in the selection equation and the recognition equation are very different.There are differences in the impact mechanism of the factors represented by explanatory variables and control variables on energy efficiency growth,environmental efficiency growth,and green total factor productivity growth.Moreover,the interaction between the various influencing factors indicates that the premise of achieving energy conservation and environmental protection is that all aspects of economic system operation meet the requirements of energy conservation and environmental protection.Based on the above empirical analysis results,a policy design plan that considers both energy conservation and environmental protection consistency is proposed.First,adjust and optimize the economic structure to meet the requirements of green development for energy conservation and environmental protection.First,we must accelerate the clean and upgrading of industrial structure;second,accelerate the pace of clean energy structure;third,promote energy conservation and environmental protection in urban and rural transportation.Then,improve the construction of a green financial and financial system;improve the green credit system;and improve the environmental pollution liability insurance mechanism.Finally,to improve the quality of international cooperation in the field of energy conservation and environmental protection,under the green “One Belt,One Road” framework,deepen cooperation with countries along the line in the energy and environment,promote the improvement of global energy governance structure,and build a community of energy destiny.