| From the beginning of the Twelfth Five-year Plan, China has been into a period of strategic opportunities and profound period of change to accelerate the transition of economic development model and achieve scientific development. The Twelfth Five-Year Program pointed out that the strategic adjustment of economic structure should be the main direction of the transformation of economic development model with the strong support of the scientific and technological and innovational progress. However, it is still outstanding that the current development is imbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable, such as the constraint resource and environment, many obstacles of development. Thus, there is still a long way to deepen reform and achieve transformation of the economic developmental model. From a practical point of view of regional economic development, various regions are faced with the difficult task of transformation of the economic developmental model. However, the pressures of restructure and development are still significantly different. As a special kind of resource-based regions, the energy-rich region is not only facing security of the continuing energy supply for the national economic development, but also achieving their own sustainable development. Therefore, it is especially an difficult task to make the transformation of the economic developmental model, implementing the sustainable development and low-carbon transformation. In this paper, efforts are made as the following aspects for the development of low-carbon transition in energy-rich regions of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia Provinces:1. Based on the special historical process of the formation of China's energy rich regions, This paper analyzes the special problems of the regional transformation development and proves the inevitability of energy-rich regions pioneering development of low-carbon transformation. Based on the special problems of the energy-rich region, this point of view expands the arguments of existing low-carbon research. This view will undoubtedly face many challenges, but this article attempts giving more reasonable and scientific explanation and theoretical supports from inevitability, particularity, feasibility and the "reversed transmission mechanism" of energy conservation and emissions reduction.2. This paper has the quality of economic growth a test for the energy-rich region from the three aspects:"resource curse", the people's livelihood achievement levels and the low-carbon economic growth. Resource Curse mainly discusses the relations between resource development and economic growth; livelihood achievements mainly talks about whether the resource bonus achievements have been transformed as the benefit of the general public; while the carbon level was mainly on the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions, designing to determine the economic growth ecological and environmental problems caused. By these three aspects of the test, we can roughly determine the level of quality of energy-rich region's economic development. Despite the simple idea of this study, and its inconsistence with the mainstream economic development research of the quality literature of ideas, these three areas have better internal logic progressive relationship, convincingly evaluating and testing the quality of economic development for the energy-rich region.3. Based on energy and environment translog production function, this paper makes the growth accounting on the sub-industries in the energy-rich region. Studies have shown that the way of industrial development has achieved a productive intensive change. Industries have achieved remarkable advances in technology. TFP has become the first driver of industrial growth. Certainly. This optimistic conclusion is closely related to the analysis methods which are used. Although the follow-up studies show that optimism is more or less from the judgment the existence of bias, the growth accounting still reveals some other conclusions:(1)The traditional energy and heavy chemical industry accounted for the absolute dominance to the whole industry TFP growth in energy-rich region, which fully shows that the heavy chemical industry with high investment, high energy consumption and high emission energy has also made tangible advances in technology, and implies that the upgrading of traditional industries already has the appropriate industrial base in energy-rich region.(2) The high-technical industry is after the industry-wide growth in traditional energy heavy chemical industry, which indicates that the acceleration of the development of existing high-tech industries mainly depend on striving to enhance the scale and efficiency in energy-rich region, which will help to diversify the industrial structure, but also promote the transformation from extensive model of growth to sustainable model which is drove by technological progress.4. Based on directional distance function and activity analysis model (AAM) of carbon regulation, this paper measures low-carbon economy transition in energy-rich region. From the perspective of the analysis of growth accounting, most of the existing literature for countries mainly focused on the overall growth of a country's domestic macro-level analysis and few studies have focused on specific regions or provinces, because of the difficulties of the data acquisition on the regional input-output, especially the data of capital stock which needs to be estimated by a special method, while due to the statistical inconsistencies which have increased the difficulty and precision of data acquisition. In this paper, I try to build37sub-industries input-output panel accurate database (1990-2011) of energy-rich region three Provinces for industrial growth accounting. The Green TFP measurement showed that the industrial development model transformation of energy-rich area has not been achieved and low-carbon transition process still has a long way to go. This indicates that we will significantly overestimate TFP and the rate of technological progress or draw a wrong conclusion on evaluating economic development model transition if we do not incorrectly consider about disposal of environmental pollution variables. The Growth of industrial sub-sectors based on panel data analysis has also more detailed and extensive research results than that based on total production, which will provide a more precise empirical basis for industrial low-carbon transition of the energy-rich region. The capital and energy-driven features of the industrial growth is still significant in energy-rich region. However, from the early1990s to the early21st century, in the region, TFP, Production efficiency and rate of technological progress of energy emissions-intensive heavy industries appeared better than light industries. This can be called the Industrial Green Productivity Revolution. In the21st century, China's industry appears the phenomenon of heavy industrialization again, which will have a special significance for energy-rich region:On the one hand, from the perspective of economic demand and supply, China strongly demand for energy and heavy chemical products behind the rising phenomenon of the heavy industrialization again, which brought a huge market for the industrial development of energy-rich region. By meeting these market demands, the total energy-rich region's economy will rapidly increase; the economy will maintain a rapid growth.On the other hand, from the perspective of the quality of economic development and low-carbon transition, the heavy reindustrialization phenomenon will undoubtedly increase the difficulty of low-carbon economy transition. However, under the constraints of rigid targets on international and domestic low-carbon development and under the urgent requirements of sustainable of energy-rich region economic development, it will form a strong "Forced mechanism ". It will force the energy-rich region to achieve a fundamental change in the way of industrial development and low carbon transition as soon as possible under maintaining moderate economic growth.5. Through the growth accounting on the sub-industries in energy-rich region, this paper gained some new perspectives about the "resource curse" explanation. The studies of37industrial sub-sectors shows that the traditional resource-dependent heavy industries produces a significant "crowding out" to the light industries and high-tech industries and also shows that the "resource curse" risk does exist in resource-based provinces. This detailed explanation on "resource curse" is difficult to see in the existing literature which mostly used the models of total production function; it is difficult to get into further internal industrial sub-sectors to find more detailed and specific representations on "resource curse" formation.In short, the fundamental way for economy low-carbon transition development in the energy-rich region is to improve TFP. Only when the contribution of TFP is greater than the number of pure inputs contribution and keeps increasing, the pattern of economic development will change radically and low-carbon transformation can be achieved. The basic path of improving TFP mainly includes adjustment of economic structure and speeding up technological progress and independent innovation, etc. of course, the paths needs a series of relevant supporting policies, such as the reform of investment system reform, employment, etc. Among them, the energy conservation and emissions reduction regulation will make short-term economic growth of the energy-rich region declined, but in the long term, it will contribute to a fundamental transformation of economic development. The energy conservation and emissions reduction regulation has been an effective "reversed transmission mechanism". It can reverse economic structural adjustment and create new energy and low-carbon technologies and will also promote energy efficiency and environment efficiency. |
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