Research On The Regulation Policies Of Urban Heating Under The Public-Private Partnerships Mode

Urban heating is an important part of public utilities.The total supply of urban heating was greatly limited by the single investment subject and the inefficiency of state-owned heating enterprise in this model.In order to enhance the supplying capacity and relieve the contradiction between supply and demand of urban heating,market-oriented reform has been introduced since the 1990s.The reform has been carried out along two lines:1.Separate the functions of the government from those of the enterprise and establish the modern enterprise system.2.Relax the restriction on capital accession and carry out the concession.The PPP(Public-Private Partnerships)mode in the form of concession are playing a more and more important role in attracting investment and optimizing the capital structure of urban heating industry.In order to encourage the social capital to invest public Infrastructure,the State Council and the Ministry of Finance have issued a series of policy about spreading the application of PPP mode in 2014.The PPP mode of urban heating has been entered a high-speed development period.According to statistics by the China Public Private Partnerships Center:By the end of 2017,the number of urban heating projects of the northern fifteen provinces was 260,the capital investment amounted to RMB 80.791 billion.Nowadays PPP has become the mainstream model of market-oriented reform of urban heating.From the theoretical point of view,the effective regulation is necessary because of the new market failure that caused by the access to utilities of private sector.Nowadays the perfect regulation system has not been established in urban heating field for the lack of sound legal system,efficient regulation institutions and effective policy instruments.Consequently,carrying out systematic research on regulation policy combining the targets of PPP mode of urban heating is of important theoretical and realistic significance.The train of thoughts of this paper are as follows:Firstly,it lay the foundation for the follow-up study through hackling the existing theoretical research on regulation of urban heating.Secondly,this paper analyses the regulation demand of PPP mode of urban heating combining the normative targets of PPP mode and analyses the regulation effects by using related data to establish panel data model,then the policy frameworks of PPP mode of urban heating was given based on the result.Finally,this paper analyses the concrete regulation policies in turn.The main contents of this paper are as follows:(1)To hackle related regulation literatures of urban heating.This paper has hackled the existing research at two levels:the cause of regulation and regulatory mode selection.The regulation on PPP mode of urban heating is primarily caused by the characteristics of quasi-public goods and natural monopoly.The traditional regulation way is failed to achieve multidimensional targets because of asymmetric information.It is the inevitable choice to carry out incentive regulation in PPP mode of urban heating.The results of hackling literatures showed that the few research on regulation policy of urban heating in our country are still remains in the stage of the original causes of the regulation.In addition,the existing research mostly focus on qualitative research,quantitative research are not common.(2)To put forward the policy frameworks of urban heating under the PPP mode.This paper has analysed the regulation demand of the urban heating on the basis of industry characteristic.This paper has carried on an empirical analysis to the performance of the PPP of urban heating with data-based panel models.On this basis,a regulation policy framework was given according to the result.The results showed that the existing mechanisms has increased the total supply and investment,promoted productivity to a certain degree.however,the effect was not obvious in optimizing the capital structure,controlling the price level and improving the universal service of urban heating.For this reason,with a view to improving the regulation effect,this paper has given the policy frameworks that including orientation,contents,instrument and the running system of policy under the PPP mode..(3)To analyze the policies of access regulation and market restructuring.Firstly,this paper has pointed out the flaws of existing market structure,which including high monopoly of state-owned enterprises,decentralized management of numerous small enterprises and the high barriers that new enterprises are facing with.On condition of workable competition,this paper has given the policy choices of market restructuring to achieve workable competition:separating the functions of the government from those of the enterprise,splitting up the large state-owned enterprises,promoting the merger and acquisition of the small heating enterprises and assuring the fair access among the heating enterprises.Later,this paper has analysed the questions in bidding qualification of urban heating projects and given the policy recommendations for fair bidding.Finally,this paper has discussed the surround-bidding and given the corresponding suggestions:perfecting the legal systems of bidding,constructing the supervisory organization,strengthening the supervision of bidding agencies and establishing the credit documents of urban heating enterprises.(4)To discuss the incentive price policies of PPP mode of urban heating.Firstly,this paper has set the four-dimensional target of price regulation of urban heating:preventing the lost profits from the monopoly price,encouraging heating enterprises to improve the efficiency,maintaining the developmental potential of heating enterprises and promoting the cleaner heating.Secondly,this paper has discussed the demand of incentive price regulation of urban heating combining the faults of cost-plus pricing mode.Comparing with the cost-plus pricing mode,incentive price regulation has at least three advantages:competitive price formation mechanism,dynamic price adjustment mechanism and pertinent subsidy mechanism.Finally,based on the general models of price ceiling and benchmarking price,this paper has discussed two kinds of incentive price policies combining with demonstration of PPP mode of urban heating of our country.(5)To discuss the universal service policies of urban heating adapting to PPP mode.This paper has discussed mode selection of universal service by settling the system dilemma of universal service in market-oriented reform of urban heating as the point of penetration,then given the corresponding suggestions at the end.The universal service of urban heating is facing with the problem of insufficiency of the system supply in PPP practice.The universal service frame that be composed of responsible bodies,Service objects and implementation mechanism should be built following the general evolutionary path of universal service mode in the economic transformation.In view of the transitional characters of the urban heating,the universal service mode has two choices:mode of government subsidies and the mode of universal service fund.Besides the shadow cost,the subsidy to the heating enterprise can also distort the cost allocation and deviate from the targets for universal service.For this reason,it should change the pricing method,strengthen the cost monitoring,build the independent regulation institution and perfect the subsidy supervision mechanism.The scope and standard of subsistence allowance should be adjusted in view of the problems of unfairness and inefficiency,besides perfecting the security system to disadvantaged groups.Establishing the universal service fund is inevitable choice to realize the universal service of urban heating under the background of market-oriented reform For this reason,five suggestions to building the universal service fund have been given:perfecting the legal systems,building the administrative organization,perfecting the supervision mechanism,strengthening the cost monitoring to heating enterprises and improving the market environment.Combining the research in the past,this paper has made the possible innovations such as the following:(1)This paper has made quantitative analysis to the performance of Public-Private Partnerships of urban heating with panel models model.The result can been taken as the empirical evidence of research on urban heating under the PPP mode.The study on the Public-Private Partnerships of urban heating was still remained in the qualitative research for lack of statistics.The conclusions of this study is not convincing enough.On the basis of collecting and collating data of urban heating,this paper has built panel model to analyze the performance of Public-Private Partnerships of urban heating.The result of regression analysis has given a strong basis for the regulation policies of Public-Private Partnerships of urban heating.(2)This paper has enriched the contents of research on PPP of urban heating by discussing the application of incentive pricing regulation in PPP mode of urban heating.Compared with developed countries,the research on incentive pricing is rare in our country.This paper analyzed the incentive pricing regulation mechanism that can balance multiple goals with building the risk sharing and income allotment framework of Public-Private Partnerships from the pricing targets of urban heating.It enriched the research on the price regulation of urban heating to a certain degree and provided a thinking for policy-making of PPP mode of urban heating.(3)This paper has provided a way for formulating universal service policies of urban heating by discussing the universal service mechanism adapting to PPP mode.The existing universal service research on utilities are focusing on telecommunications,electricity sector and postal industry but the urban heating.The research on universal service of urban heating is fragmented in general.On the basis of the specific notion of universal service,this paper has discussed the policy choice from the dilemma of universal service of urban heating during the process of market-oriented reform.The result has given a basis for the universal service regulation policies of Public-Private Partnerships of urban heating.