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How to reduce energy intensity to achieve sustainable development of China's transport sector? A cross-regional comparison analysis

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  • Zha, Jianping
  • Tan, Ting
  • Fan, Rong
  • Xu, Han
  • Ma, Siqi

Abstract

China's transport sector has been attracting great attention for its excessive energy consumption and ever-increasing pollution emissions. Thus, reducing energy intensity is one of the top priorities of China's ongoing transport upgrade. In this paper, by establishing a panel data regression model derived from the Cobb–Douglas cost function, we focus on investigating the impacts of energy price and transport productivity on transport energy intensity at the national and regional levels. The study uses the provincial panel data for 2005–2016 to perform regression analysis. The results show that: (1) energy price has a significantly negative effect on transport energy intensity in the whole China and the eastern region, whereas it has no significant impacts in the central and western China. (2) Improvements in transport productivity can effectively decrease transport energy intensity in the whole China and the three major regions. (3) Applying an extended data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach, we decompose transport productivity into four components (i.e., technical change, technology gap change, scale efficiency change, and pure efficiency change) and further differentiate their impacts in different regions. The results indicate that these four components have substantially different impacts in each region. These results provide some valuable insights for policymakers and enterprise entities aiming to adopt measures to reduce energy intensity and achieve sustainable development in China's transport sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Zha, Jianping & Tan, Ting & Fan, Rong & Xu, Han & Ma, Siqi, 2020. "How to reduce energy intensity to achieve sustainable development of China's transport sector? A cross-regional comparison analysis," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceps:v:71:y:2020:i:c:s0038012119301958
    DOI: 10.1016/j.seps.2019.100772
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