Dynamic Effects and Regional Differences of Industrialization and Urbanization on China’s Energy Intensity under the Background of “Dual Carbon”

Abstract

Based on China’s provincial panel data during 2012–2019, this paper performs an empirical analysis of the dynamic effect and regional difference of industrialization and urbanization on the energy intensity in China by separating the energy intensity into three levels including low, middle and high and using the dynamic panel data with system GMM estimation. The results show that the energy intensity will increase by 0.4298% for every 1% increase in the industrialization level on the premise of keeping other variables unchanged. For every 1% increase in the urbanization level, the energy intensity will increase by 0.5674% on average. For every 1% increase in energy intensity in the previous period, the energy intensity in that year will increase by 0.7968% on average. Moreover, there are regional differences in the effects of industrialization and urbanization on the energy intensity in areas with different energy intensities. In addition, all of the factors including the development level of the regional economy, energy price, and technological innovation have different effects on the energy intensity in China. Meanwhile, there exist the rebound effects of the technological innovation in China, and the energy price has an induced effect on the technological innovation. Undoubtedly, industrialization and urbanization jointly promote the increase in energy intensity. At the same time, the level of economic development, energy prices and technological innovation are also reasons for the differences in the energy intensity among regions. Therefore, in order to effectively reduce energy intensity while carrying out technological innovation, promoting high-quality development and increasing income, it is necessary to improve the internal quality of industrialization and urbanization, and to promote new resource-saving and environmentally friendly methods of industrialization and urbanization.

Dynamic evolution of urban infrastructure resilience and its spatial spillover effects: An empirical study from China

“…Are there any differences in the contributions of each factor to the spillover effect? To address these questions, drawing on relevant studies by established scholars of resilient cities [18,19,23], the infrastructure development level [50][51][52][53], and the influencing factors of urban development quality [54][55][56] and based on the principles of scientificity, rationality, and accessibility, we select population density (X1), the economic development level (X2), the urbanization level (X3), the industrial structure (X4), the financial development level (X5), the market consumption level (X6), the infrastructure investment level (X7), and the local government financial expenditure level (X8) as explanatory variables; they are measured by the total population/administrative land area, GDP per capita, the urbanization rate, the proportion of the value added of the tertiary industry in GDP, the proportion of the loan balance of local financial institutions in GDP, the total retail sales of consumer goods per capita, the completed infrastructure investment in the year, and total government financial expenditure, respectively. The spillover effects of UIR in 2010, 2015, and 2019 are verified and analyzed based on traditional ordinary least squares (OLS) linear regression models, SLMs, and SEMs.…”