The Utilization Efficiency Of Industrial Water Under The Dual Constraints Of Resource And Environment

Chinese water resources are faced with a severe situation at present, including water shortage, water pollution and deterioration of the water ecological environment, which has become a crucial bottleneck to the sustainable development. Especially, the lower industrial water use efficiency has a severe effect on industrial development. Therefore, it’s imperative to improve the efficiency step by step. On the basis of reviewing the papers of energy and resource use efficiency, this paper studies the decoupling relation between industrial development and industrial water using decoupling theory in the different provinces and regions. The results indicate that the number of provinces in eastern region is absolute decoupling more than in the central and western regions using OECD index. While relations of most provinces in the eastern and central regions are decoupling using Tapio index, but the degree of decoupling is different. What’s more, the SBM-Undesirable and Meta-frontier models are used in combination with empirical data of 30 provinces in China from 1999 to 2013, to compare industrial water use efficiency in 30 provinces and the eastern, central and western under meta-frontier and group-frontier. The empirical results show that the industrial water use efficiency has a big difference between meta-frontier and group-frontier, due to the heterogeneity in the levels of industrial water use technology. The industrial water use efficiency in the eastern, central and western regions under group-frontier are significantly higher than or equal to that under meta-frontier; but efficiency values are generally lower when incorporated in industrial water pollutants and have a larger room for improving it. Further, the study finds that influencing factors of the efficiency, including abundance of water resources, water price, level of economic development and industrialization, water-saving technology and regulation of industrial water pollution, have a different effect on the efficiency in different regions. Particularly, the current price of industrial water is distorted to some extent, failing to coordinate with the use of water resources. Policy revelations indicate that the efficiency is not only related to technological heterogeneity in different regions, but also the control and treatment of industrial water pollution. Therefore, the current price of industrial water should be gradually raised. A scalar water pricing system as residential water could also be applied to industrial water.