The Impact Of Energy Price Distortions On China’s Energy Efficiency

Improving China’s total factor energy efficiency is the most important to accelerate the transformation of China’s economy from traditional extensive economy to intensive,low-carbon and energy-saving economy.Among many factors affecting energy efficiency,the price factor occupies an unshakable leading position.A reasonable energy price system can promote the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure,the adjustment of energy structure and the key to the promotion of energy-saving technology,so it dominates the impact of other factors on energy efficiency.However,due to the influence of government regulation,China’s energy prices are distorted to varying degrees,which seriously restricts the market to optimize the allocation of resources.Especially in China,the price of energy elements such as electricity and natural gas is still fixed by the government,which can not reflect the real scarcity and the real law of market supply and demand.It has caused great obstacles to the establishment of a long-term mechanism of energy conservation and emission reduction.Therefore,from the perspective of energy prices,this paper analyses the comprehensive impact of energy price distortions on China’s energy efficiency.Firstly,using the DEA shadow price model to calculate the energy shadow price of various regions in China from 2000 to 2016,on the basis of this,the comparison between the energy shadow price and the relative actual price of energy shows that there are indeed energy price distortions in all regions of China.Negative distortion,energy prices are lower than their actual value.Among them,the energy price distortion in the eastern region is the highest,and the distortion in the western region is the lowest.Between 2000 and 2016,China’s energy price distortions have shown different degrees of decline.Secondly,the energy efficiency of China’s regions from 2000 to 2016 is measured by DEA’s total factor energy efficiency model.The results show that China’s energy efficiency is on the rise.And the eastern region has the highest energy efficiency and the western region has the lowest energy efficiency.Finally,the nonlinear regression analysis shows the impact of energy price distortion on energy efficiency.At the national level,the contribution rate of energy price distortion to energy efficiency growth is-24.8%,indicating that the increase in energy price distortions inhibits the growth of energy efficiency.This conclusion is also established at the regional level.The contribution rates of energy price distortions to total factor energy efficiency growth in China’s eastern,central and western regions are-29.1%,-15.8%and-14.7%,respectively.Therefore,this paper believes that reducing energy price distortion will improve energy efficiency to some extent.