Analyze On Regional Disparity And Influential Factors Of Energy Utilization Efficiency In China

Energy is the basic driving force of world economic development, and it’s anessential material basis for human society. As an increasingly important mean ofproduction and livelihood, energy plays a crucial role in promoting economicdevelopment. With the constant expansion of the world economy, the overall trend ofglobal energy consumption has maintained rapid growth, which has brought about anever-closer relationship between energy consumption and economic development.As well as enjoying the convenience of economic development and technologicalprogress brought about by the energy, human beings have also encountered a seriesof inevitably energy security challenges, energy shortages, environmental pollutionand other issues which are direct threats to human survival and development.Since the Reform and Opening-up, China’s total energy consumption has grownrapidly, which has grown from571million tons of standard coal in1978to3080million tons of standard coal in2010with the average annual growth rate of5.41%.However, there is still a huge gap between China and the advanced countriesin energy-efficiency levels, and the efficiency of energy utilization is much lowerthan the world average level. Moreover, there exists excessively imbalance indevelopment of regional economy in China, coupled with the varying optimizationdegrees of economic structure and the differences of resource endowment, there aregreat regional differences in the efficiency of energy utilization in every provinceand municipality in China, which has expanded each year. If the energy use oflow-efficiency regions could catch up with the high efficiency regions’, China’soverall energy efficiency will improved in a large degree.At the same time, in order to save energy resources, protect the environment,and further improve the quality and efficiency of economic development, Chinacontinue to take energy saving as the constraints indicators of economic and social development in the "12th Five-Year" Outline Plan, and set a goal to slash the energyconsumption per unit of GDP by16percent between2010and2015. Take theregional disparity of energy utilization efficiency with scientific understanding andanalysis the main causes of differences in time is an important prerequisite toachieve the targets of energy conservation and pollution reduction, which is also animportant basis for formulating the energy economic policy and evaluating theenergy saving performance of each province and municipality scientifically.On the basis of summing up and analyzing the domestic and internationalliterature reviews conscientiously, The paper select scientific metrics to measure thecurrent state of the energy utilization efficiency and use the SPSS19.0to classify theenergy utilization efficiency by region with the method of hierarchical cluster, whichdivide all provinces and municipalities into the high efficiency region of energyutilization efficiency, medium efficiency region and low-efficiency region, then useregression analysis on the various factors affecting the efficiency of energy and findthat the structure of energy consumption, production technical level, energy price,industrial structure and the level of investment have a significant impact on the levelof energy utilization efficiency. According to analyzing on these influential factors,we can identify the reasons for regional disparity of energy efficiency utilizationdifferences, and propose appropriate policy recommendations to narrow the regionaldifferences and improve the energy utilization efficiency: First, set the differenttargets of energy-saving and emission-reduction in different efficiency regions;Second, optimize the industrial structure, and improve the development oftertiary-industry; Third, increase the investment on new variety and high-qualityenergy economy; The last, speed up market-oriented reforms on energy prices, andimprove energy utilization efficiency through the market.At the present stage, to solve the energy shortage, the expansion of the regionaldisparity of energy utilization efficiency, environmental pollution and so on, themost direct and effective method is to take the strategy of save energy consumptionand improve the energy utilization efficiency. It has important theoretical andpractical significance for improving energy utilization efficiency, transferring the mode of economic development and making energy economic policy that make anintensive study on regional disparity and influential factors of energy utilizationefficiency.