Technological Progress And Coal Consumption

It is a key measure for not only ecological civilization building and low carbon development,but also carbon dioxide peaking and carbon neutrality to promote the coal consumption transforming orderly.Technological progress is one of the main driving factors for the improvement of energy efficiency.Moreover,the status of coal as main energy will not change for a long time in China,and high coal-consuming industries consume more and more coal currently.Therefore,it is necessary for us to pay more attention to the relationship between coal consumption and technological progress in high coal-consuming industries,which could provide support for the transformation of coal consumption and high-quality development.Based on the analysis of the spatial and temporal characteristics of coal consumption in China,the six high coal-consuming industries,including processing of petroleum,coking,and processing of nuclear fuel;manufacture of raw chemical materials and chemical products;manufacture of non-metallic mineral products;smelting and processing of ferrous metals;smelting and processing of nonferrous metals;and production and supply of electricity and heat power,are used as the target of this thesis.The super-efficiency Slacks-Based Measure(SBM)with undesirable outputs is applied to evaluate the efficiency of coal consumption by regions,meanwhile the Directional Distance Function(DDF)and Global Malmquist-Luenberger(GML)index are applied to measure the trend of technological progress in high coal-consuming industries by provinces.On the basis of provincial panel data from 2006-2018,we construct a dynamic panel regression model to quantitatively analyze the impact of technological progress in high coal-consuming industries on coal consumption.At the same time,we test the heterogeneity caused by regional development imbalance.Finally,mediating effects model is applied to verify the theoretical mechanism of technological progress.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)Not only has the growth rate of coal consumption slowed down in recent years,but also the proportion of coal consumption has decreased year by year.Meanwhile,coal consumption is mainly concentrated in Shanxi,Inner Mongolia,Shandong and other coal power provinces,which is also mainly consumed by six high coal-consuming industries.(2)The coal consumption efficiency in the eastern shows an accelerating upward trend,while the consumption efficiency in the western is the lowest,showing regional heterogeneity of high in the eastern and low in the western.(3)The results of dynamic panel regression model show that there is a U-shaped relationship between technological progress and coal consumption.The heterogeneity test results show that there is a U-shaped relationship in the eastern and western,while there isn’t in the central.The "rebound effect" of technological progress in the eastern is more obvious due to the level of economic development.(4)The mediating effect test results show that the technological progress of high coal-consuming industries reduces coal consumption by affecting the intensity of coal consumption.(5)Each region should formulate differentiated controlling strategies of coal consumption.The eastern region should optimize the structural reform of the energy supply side,in order to continue to reduce the total coal consumption and its proportion in primary energy,which could control the rebound of coal consumption.The central and western regions should raise the market-threshold for high coal consumption industries.Besides,they should also improve the electrification level of high coal consumption industries and increase technological supports for clean utilization of coal,so that these regions could gradually get rid of the dependence of economic development on coal.