Abstract：In 2021, China entered the “14th Five-Year Plan” period. However, the post-pandemic era is a crucial strategic one for the country. The process of economic globalization and world multi-polarization will make profound adjustments and changes. Recently, due to the soaring coal prices and insufficient energy supply, power outages have attracted widespread attention from all walks of life. Consequently, economic uncertainty has increased, and the international environment has become unprecedentedly complex. The issues of energy security and sustainable development are particularly important. The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee also emphasized these issues, it is urgent to achieve a sustainable development of the energy industry with green, clean, safe, reliable, innovative and high-quality supplies. Then, the conference further proposes the goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. Understanding the level of sustainable development in the country is the first step. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a systematic framework to evaluate the energy development level of China based on the energy utilization status.
Hence, we construct an analytical framework with 35 indicators from three aspects of the energy supply side, demand side and affordability. We use the entropy method to analyze the energy sustainable development level of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2018. The following conclusions are drawn. From the perspective of weight, the energy supply side has the highest weight and the demand side has the lowest weight in the first-level indicators. Beijing, Liaoning, Jiangsu, and Guangdong rank high in the overall index, while Jiangxi, Guizhou, Ningxia, Hainan, Qinghai and other provinces have relatively low levels of sustainable development. From the perspective of regions, the energy development of the eastern regions are all in the leading position, while the western regions lag behind, but there is an upward trend in recent years. From the perspective of administrative divisions, different geographical regions have different endowment advantages and development characteristics. The northern regions have abundant energy resources. Therefore, resources and thermal power infrastructure have a relatively large comparative advantage in energy supply. The eastern regions have a relatively low-carbon position because of their financial revenue and expenditure, population sizes, energy infrastructure, and cleaner production. They have a relatively low-carbon and sustainable demand development prospect. From the perspective of economic development level, the demand and affordability index of developed regions are much larger than that of the other regions, while the supply side index is slightly lower than in other regions. From the perspective of population density, the results of densely populated areas are much larger than those of other regions.
Finally, based on the above-mentioned detailed comparative analysis, we put forward these suggestions. In terms of clean transformation, it is necessary to accelerate the elimination of backward production capacity. The government should promote a gradual transformation of the energy structure to a clean and low-carbon industrial chain. In terms of technology application, the government should accelerate the implementation and application of advanced technologies, such as green hydrogen and carbon capture. It is necessary to implement policies in accordance with digital means, which can create a new growth space for a sustainable development. In terms of strategic planning, provincial governments should effectively decompose their carbon emission reduction targets as based on local reality, formulate detailed rules for energy structure transformation and use fiscal policy, financial policy and other policy tools to complete the dual control of energy consumption in an orderly manner.
丁守海、徐政、江小鹏. 中国省际能源可持续发展综合评价——基于国内大循环视角[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 0, (): 1-.
Ding Shouhai Xu Zheng Jiang Xiaopeng. A Research on China’s Energy Sustainable Development Evaluation in the New Era. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 0, (): 1-.
