Resources Science ›› 2018, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (12): 2438-2450.doi: 10.18402/resci.2018.12.11

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A study on the consistency and influencing factors of China’s provincial energy saving and environmental protection

Haiying LIU1,2(), Jing SHANG1,2,3(), Dianwu WANG1,2   

  1. 1. Center for Quantitative Economics, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
    2. Business School, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
    3. Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Science, Harbin 150018, China
  • Received:2018-05-09 Revised:2018-09-21 Online:2018-12-20 Published:2018-12-10

Abstract:

Energy conservation and environmental protection are two basic footholds for practicing the concept of green development of China. Whether the two can be coordinated is related to the sustainable development of China's economy. Incorporated the clean structure of energy consumption into the non-radial directional distance function (NDDF) which based on environmental technology, and used it to measure the energy saving efficiency, environmental protection efficiency, energy saving and environmental protection efficiency of total factors, and judged the realization of the consistency of inter-provincial energy conservation and environmental protection in China from 2001 to 2016 according to the calculation results. Found that if the clean structure of energy consumption is not considered, it will lead to the underestimation of the above-mentioned DEA total factor efficiency value. It is also found that the phenomenon of energy saving and environmental imbalance is more common than high energy consumption and high pollution. Probit model regression results show that the direction and intensity of the impact of fiscal energy conservation and environmental protection expenditure on energy conservation and environmental protection consistency depends on the level of economic development. On the contrary, the improvement of economic development level and the enhancement of environmental regulation have a negative impact on the realization of energy conservation and environmental protection consistency. The former suggests the existence of the phenomenon that sacrificing resources and environment to exchange for economic growth, while the latter illustrates that the Potter effect of “appropriate environmental regulation can stimulate technological innovation” has not yet appeared in China. The level of openness has a negative impact on achieving energy conservation and environmental coherence. Although this negative impact is small, it is enough to warn of the existence of “pollution paradise” risk.

Key words: total factors efficiency, consistency of energy conservation and environmental protection, Non-radial Directional Distance Function(NDDF), clean structure of energy consumption, Probit Model, China