Analysis Of The Convergence And Its Causes Of The Petroleum Consumption Intensity In China

Since China’s reform and opening up, with the speeding up of economic development and the process of urbanization, the amount of China’s energy consumption has grown up very rapidly, and the bottleneck effect of energy has been highlighted day by day. Overall the problem of energy consumption structure and the environment problem are not only affect the quality of life of ordinary people, but also will have significant influences on the development of China’s society and economy. Based on the related researches by other scholars and considering China’s specific national conditions, we can conclude that these problems above are related to the innate endowment of China’s energy--lean in petroleum and gas,but rich in coal, as well as to the present development stage of China’s economic. From the development of countries all over the world, compared to the coal, petroleum, as a kind of high energy resources, is not only much more widely used, but also has less environment pollution. And the consumption of the petroleum is also an important trend for China’s energy transformation for a certain period in the future. Therefore, from the viewpoint of energy efficiency, the analysis of the energy consumption intensity at present and the rule of its convergence will not only provide effective theoretical support for improving the utilization efficiency of petroleum resources, but also provide references for transforming the mode of economic growth and improving the quality of economic growth in our country.The existing researches show that the academic community usually tend to study the energy utilization efficiency from the perception of total energy, while there are relatively rare systematic researches from the perception of classification of different types of energy. The quality and the utilization efficiency of different type of energy is different, so as a result, the corresponding influences and the effects are also different, which results in that the some research results of scholars can not be compared to each other and may not be universal. In addition, the existing researches are lack of accurately definition about the concept and connotation of the classification energy consumption’s intensity, efficiency and so on. And the measurement methods and evaluation indexes are also remains to be improved. Considering the characteristics of china’s energy endowment, the classification research of energy efficiency is more advantageous to understand china’s energy consumption effects and the relationship between energy consumption and the economic and social development. Based on these problems, this article pivots on the core issue to optimize China’s petroleum energy consumption efficiency, follows the thought that "theory from practice, and guide practice", adopts the research train of thought that "theory carding, phenomenon analysis, characteristic research, cause analysis and countermeasures putting-forth", combines the theoretical analysis and empirical analysis together, and analyzes, in detail, the Convergence features of petroleum consumption intensity in China. The main research contents are as follows:(1) Improve and clarify the connotation of energy efficiency, measure the intensity of petroleum consumption and analyze the influence factors of the intensity of petroleum consumption. On the basis of classification and summary of the existing research results about energy efficiency, this paper analyzes in details the definition,the classification and the measurement method of energy efficiency, and clarify the measurement method of energy efficiency by the research conclusions. Then based on the systematic logic analysis of the relationship between economic development and energy consumption, this paper empirically studies the key influence factors to the intensity of petroleum consumption in China, and finds that there exists not only great similarity between the influence factors that affect the formation and change of the intensity of petroleum consumption and the overall energy consumption, but also certain difference, that is, technical factor is basic and key factor in the study of the overall energy consumption intensity but has no significant impact on the analysis of the intensity of petroleum consumption.(2) Change characteristics and evolution trend of petroleum consumption intensity from the long-term perspective. On the basis of the concept of petroleum consumption intensity clarified last chapter, this paper analyzes the changes of petroleum consumption intensity in different areas and different industries in China. The results show that the intensity of petroleum consumption of most provinces are declining overall and for specific area, the change of petroleum consumption intensity also has certain regional differences, that is, the intensity of petroleum consumption in perimeter regions of the Eastern and the Western declines much more rapidly than that in the middle regions of the the Inland areas. Moreover, in terms of the level of industries, the intensity of petroleum consumption of all industries are declining year by year, of which the second industry undergoes the largest decline. Generally, this trend of the intensity of petroleum consumption shows that,in recent years, China’s energy policy and industrial structure adjustment has received certain effect. And from the visual perspective,this trend also indirectly shows that the intensity of petroleum consumption may exist certain convergence characteristics.(3) Study on the features of the regional differences of Chinese petroleum consumption intensity. Based on change characteristics and evolution trend of petroleum consumption intensity, Considering the logic relationship of difference and Convergence features of the Petroleum consumption intensity, this chapter emphatically focus on the quantitative inspection of the visualization conclusions from the perspective of regional intensity differences of petroleum consumption. Based on both static panel model and short-term-analysis panel error correction model. We divide the 30 provinces in mainland of China into 4 zones, by the quadrant diagram with the intensity of petroleum consumption and the level of economic development as two dimensions and then analyze the petroleum consumption intensity and the influence factors of different zone. The study results shows that with the increase of per capita GDP, the petroleum consumption intensity of four zones all show a significant decline on the whole, while the changes are significantly different in different areas.(4) Study on the convergence characteristics and the trend of China’s petroleum consumption intensity. Based on the quantitative conclusions made by last chapter that China’s petroleum consumption intensity is decreasing, in order to further systematically illustrate the convergence characteristics of China’s petroleum consumption intensity, this chapter analyze,in details, the convergence characteristics of China’s petroleum consumption intensity by four convergence measurement models, such as, the ? convergence model, the ? convergence model, the club convergence model and the spatial econometric measure convergence model. The conclusion shows that China’s province petroleum energy consumption intensity has absolute ? convergence and conditional ? convergence trend. And urban and rural population structure and the proportion of transportation industry has negative effect on the convergence of energy consumption intensity while the improvement of output per head, the proportion of secondary industry and the improvement of coal energy consumption may reduce the petroleum energy intensity differences among different provinces to promote the convergence.(5) Study on the urbanization effect of China’s petroleum consumption intensity. After the macro analysis of the petroleum consumption intensity, given China’s great differences between the urban and rural areas, especially the impact of the production and consumption differences of urban and rural areas on the petroleum energy consumption. To further enhance the practical value of the research, this chapter using nonlinear threshold panel model to analyze the convergence effect of the intensity of petroleum consumption in China’s urbanization process. The results show that the optimization of the industrial structure in the process of urbanization has relatively significant convergent effect on petroleum consumption intensity.(6) Study on the industry effect of China’s petroleum consumption intensity. The analysis of the change law on Industry level is also an important basis for the government to regulates the market. At present, China is on the key stage of economic development model transition and to optimize the industrial structure and to improve the quality of economic development is the core of the economic transformation. In this paper, the effect of industrial structure adjustment on oil consumption intensity was studied through constructing the Kuznets curve model. The conclusion, on the one hand, illustrates the fact that China’s petroleum consumption intensity converges year by year, and on the other hand, further analysis shows that the adjustment of industrial structure is the main factor results in the convergence trend of China’s petroleum consumption intensity.