Research On The Impact Of Different Environmental Regulations On China's Energy Efficiency

In recent years,great achievements have been made in China's economic construction,and people's living standards have been continuously improved.However,this rapid economic growth mainly relies on high-input and high-consumption methods.The large amount of energy consumption brought about has seriously damaged the ecological environment and caused various environmental pollution problems.With the depletion of various non-renewable energy sources,the contradiction between energy supply and demand has gradually intensified.Energy shortage and environmental pollution have gradually become an important bottleneck restricting the sustainable development of China's economy,and have become an urgent problem to be solved at this stage.For energy and environmental issues,using various environmental regulations as a means to adjust the energy consumption structure and establish a sustainable economic development model has become a common method in countries around the world,and it has also been widely used in China.Environmental regulation is a common means of regulating economic activities,and it achieves environmental protection goals by formulating various relevant policies.Relevant departments in China have formulated a large number of environmental regulation policies related to energy development,utilization and environmental protection.These intervention policies implemented for environmental protection and rational use of resources have reduced energy consumption and pollution emissions of the entire economy and society through various channels,Which in turn affects energy efficiency through various direct and indirect channels.There are many kinds of environmental regulation policy tools.According to previous research on environmental regulation policy tools in academic circles,environmental regulation is often divided into three types: command control,market incentive and public participation environmental regulation according to different regulatory bodies.Based on different environmental regulations,there are great differences in policy content and main role.Different types of environmental regulations will cause corresponding changes in the production methods and production costs of enterprises in different implementation methods and from different paths.In turn,it has an impact on energy efficiency from different perspectives.Therefore,we need to accurately analyze the impact of these three types of environmental regulatory tools on energy efficiency and policy effectiveness from different perspectives.This paper aims to analyze the impact of three different types of environmental regulation policies on China's energy efficiency: order control,market incentive and public participation.Based on the relevant data of 30 provinces(municipalities and autonomous regions)except Tibet from 2003 to 2017,through the construction of the indicator system of environmental regulation level,the weights of the secondary indicators are respectively confirmed according to the principle of entropy method,and the comprehensive scores of three different types of environmental regulation are calculated,i.e.order control type,market incentive type and public participation type.In addition,SFA model is used to measure the total factor energy efficiency of 30 provinces(municipalities,autonomous regions)in China.Then,the panel regression model is constructed to analyze the impact of these three types of environmental regulations on energy efficiency.Finally,this paper summarizes the main conclusions of this study and puts forward the policy recommendations of China's rational use of environmental regulation tools to improve energy efficiency.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)There are differences in the level of command-controlled environmental regulation,market-inspired environmental regulation,and public participation in environmental regulation.Relatively speaking,market-incentive environmental regulation has the highest level,followed by public participation,and command-control has the lowest level.Low level.In the fifteen years from 2003 to 2017,the level of China's command-and-control environmental regulations was relatively stable overall.The level of market-inspired environmental regulation fluctuated within a small range during the sample period,but it showed a rising trend overall.The level of public participation in environmental regulation fluctuates greatly.(2)According to the energy efficiency results obtained from the SFA model,during the sample period from 2003 to 2017,the average energy efficiency of the 30 provinces in China as a whole maintained a steady and slowly rising trend.Dividing the country into three regions: east,middle,and west,and calculating the average energy efficiency of these three regions,we find that the energy efficiency averages of the eastern region and the central and western regions are very different.Energy efficiency is highest in the eastern region,second in the central region,and lowest in the western region.At the same time,the average energy efficiency in the central and western regions is lower than the national.(3)The empirical results of the panel regression model show that the impact of the three types of environmental regulatory policy tools on the energy efficiency of China's 30 provinces(municipalities and autonomous regions)is very different.The impact of command-and-control environmental regulation policies on energy efficiency is not significant.Both market-incentive and public-participation environmental regulations have significant effects on energy efficiency.Among them,market-incentive environmental regulations have the most significant effect on energy efficiency.