The Study On Regional Convergence Of Energy Efficiency In China

Energy,an indispensable and fundamental material basis on economic development around the word,has everything to do with politics and economics,such as improvement of people's livelihood and national security.Energy efficiency improvement is an important approach to the sustainable environment development.However there are differences among regional energy efficiency due to unbalanced industrialization,urbanization,resource endowment in our vast territory.The key to improve energy utilization is to enhance the overall energy efficiency as well as narrowing down the differences among numerous areas.This thesis explores the characteristics of energy efficiency in China from the perspective of regional energy efficiency differences.Under the production theory,we build invest-oriented DEA model of super efficiency with fixed returns,and measure the total factor energy efficiency of China's 30 provinces(excepting Tibet,Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan)from 1997 to 2016,then compare the differences of energy efficiency on eight economic regions in China,and take convergence tests on regional energy efficiency.The main findings of this thesis are the following.Firstly,there has been an upward trend on energy utilization among these years.Yet the performance of coastal regions in the east is better than the west.Secondly,there is no strict sigma convergence between national energy efficiency and regional energy efficiency by method of standard deviation and Theil index.In 1997-2016,energy efficiency in China was in conditional beta convergence rather than absolute beta convergence.At the same time,both conditional beta convergence and absolute beta convergence of energy efficiency show in the northeast region,the eastern coastal region,the middle reaches area of the Yellow River,the middle reaches area of Yangtze river,the southwest region and the northwest region.The energy efficiency of the north coastal region diverged.But there is no evidence to support the energy efficiency have convergence in the south coastal region.Finally,energy structure,industrial level,industrial structure,technological progress and the degree of opening to the outside world are important factors affecting the energy efficiency convergence.This thesis argues that improving energy efficiency,and presenting characteristic of convergence is meaningful,so improve the level of energy efficiency is as important as reduce regional differences for the improvement of energy efficiency.According to the their own conditions of energy efficiency and convergence on eight economic regions,certain methods should be taken respectively from the aspects of energy-resource structure,industrial level,industrial structure,technological progress and the degree of opening to the outside world to realize the green development of energy use.