An Holistic Approach To The Evaluation Index System Of Energy System Sustainability And Its Application

Energy is a must for all human survival and development.In this case,a system of stable,safe and reliable energy supply as well as of an efficient,clean,and economical energy utilization are the basic guarantees for the sustainable development of human economy and society.Globally,both developed and developing countries are actively promoting the sustainable development of energy system,however,the resource endowment,the scale of economic development,the process of industrialization,and the stage of urbanization capability by different countries or regions significantly differ.Therefore,the challenges encountered by different nations for the construction of sustainable energy systems are varying,among which China has attracted the global attention.Under such cirmstances,to propose strategies for the sustainable development of China's energy system,it is necessary to clarify the current state of construction and operation of China's energy system.This requires a comprehensive evaluation of the status quo throughout the entire energy system.In view of the complexity of the internal energy system and the inextricable links with the human economy,environment and society,there is still no globally recognized definition and standard on the sustainability of the energy system at the current stage.In this case,how to measure and assess the quality of the entire energy system for different nations or regions in a scientific,systematic and comprehensive way becomes a difficult but extremely urgent matter,especially the selection of energy indicators and evaluation methods are the core of current research and future research trend.This research addresses the international and domestic needs of national strategies and energy policy responses to climate change.It is based on the theories of sustainable development,regional economics,multi-attribute decision-making methods,arimed with multiple qualitative and quantitative analysis tools.Five major research projects in the theme of the assessment of energy system sustainability are developed as the following.(1)Based on the Meta-review of the extant domestic and international research,this article defines the concepts and criteria for the sustainability of energy systems.In view of energy system,it can be decomposed into energy supply system and energy consumption system.Energy supply system consists of domestic resource endowment and energy reserves,dependence on energy imports,energy extraction and production capability,and energy transmission efficiency,while energy consumption system include the availability of energy systems,the needs of end-use sectors commonly as agricultural sector,industrial sector,commercial sector,transportation sector,etc.It is notable that the perspective from the internal system is not enough because the energy system entails environmental externalities and inter-generational externalities.All the above elements are integrated into the energy system and each of them plays an important role in achieving the sustainable development of an energy system.In this case,the sustainability of energy supply is specifically reflected in the stability,cleanliness,efficiency,and cost-effectiveness,while the sustainability of energy consumption is specifically reflected in end-use intensity and consumer equity.In addition,attention must be paid to the impact of the energy system on the environment,here mainly refers to air,water and land pollution.Meanwhile,policy and regulation will also affect the market.(2)With the settings of the criteria for the assessment of energy system sustainability,a comprehensive evaluation index system for energy system sustainability is derived from the four dimensions of "sustainability of energy supply”,“sustainability of energy consumption”,“environmental sustainability”,and “institutional sustainability",armed with qualitative and quantitative methods.First,a systematic review and meta-analysis of 216 indicators used in21 benchmarking articles are conducted,along with expert views,a theoretical framework consisting of 15 secondary indicators and 46 tertiary indicators was initially constructed.However,considering the redundancy and availability,this study used correlation analysis and principal component analysis to perform a second screening,thereby selecting a set of indicators which can be applied for empirical studies,named Energy System Sustainability Indicator Framework(ESSIF).(3)Using ESSIF,an ideal solution based on a newly created weighting method was given to the Energy System Sustainability Index(ESSI).ESSI allows for a comprehensive evaluation of the energy sustainable performance,aiming to evaluate the status quo of the development of China's energy system in comparison with other countries.As what was mentioned above,experts' views are usually objective and hard to acquire.In this case,21 publications including book reports released by international organizations,and 17 article published in peer-reviewed journals are selected as the benchmark,from which a total of 216 indicators are also screening out.In this case,the frequencies of each indicator out of 21 publications are used as the objective weighting index,along with the subjective weights calculated by the entropy method,a newly created weighting method is assigned to the TOPSIS method,thereby,reflecting the sustainability of the energy system on a global scale.It was found that there is still a huge gap in energy performance between developing countries and developed countries.China,Brazil,South Africa and India have much lower scores in overall performance,especially India,with the lowest score of only 0.337.China's energy system has significant gap with the developed countries in terms of supply,end-consumption,and environmental sustainability.However,due to its active participation in global climate change mitigation,a number of energy-saving and emission reduction plans have been introduced,resulting in a relatively good performance in the energy regulation.(4)Using ESSIF,a global dynamic weighting method based on global entropy was used to construct China's provincial energy system sustainability index,aiming to assess the regional performance for sustainable energy development during the "Eleventh Five-Year" and "Twelfth Five-Year" period.It is found that during the “Eleventh Five-Year” and“Twelfth Five-Year Plan” period,the performance of energy systems in most provinces was relatively stable,with most regions showing a slight increase but not coherent.Obviously,due to the uncertainties in the macroeconomic development environment and the impact of different stages of energy policy adjustments,more provinces have experienced a sharp decline in their scores in the early period of the 12 th Five-Year Plan period,and have significantly improved in the middle and later stages.If seen from the comprehensive performance of various regions,the overall performance of energy systems in the western provinces is slightly better than that of the eastern region.If seen from the four dimensions of energy supply,consumption,environmental and institutional sustainability respectively,the gaps in the energy supply side in the Eastern,Middle and Western regions are not significant,but were enlarged the environment,consumption and institutional sustainability.It is worth noting that the environmental pollution in the Eastern provinces is even more serious,this partly encourages eastern region to spend greater efforts in energy conservation and emission reduction.(5)Using spatial econometric models on the spatial interactions between the macroeconomic growth and the sustainable development of energy systems.By applying the Moran'I index,it is found that significant spatial autocorrelation exsists in the process of developing a sustainable energy system.In this case,the spatial lag model,spatial error model and spatial Durbin model were used to test the relationship between the sustainability of provincial energy systems in China and economic growth,industrial structure and urbanization rate using the panel data for 30 provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions(PAR)during 2006-2015.The empirical results reveal that the spatial effects of the province's per-capita GDP and energy system over its neighboring provinces indeed works for the progress.ESSI and per capita GDP are following the pathway in an inverted-N shape.Given that the current industrial structure cannot be immediately changed in the short-term,and the process of urbanization will bring more “hedonistic” demand for energy consumption,the increase in the proportion of industry and the process of urbanization will initially curb the sustainable development of energy systems.Additonally,the sustainable development of energy system in one province is more likely to be pulled down due to the completion of scarce resources.Therefore,the government should pay special attention to the coordination between the regions.In particular,the collaboration of those regions with similar types of resources and consumption patterns or cultural background can help reduce the cost of decision-making by mimicking the favorable energy and environmental policies of each other.At the same time,the authorities also needs to consider the income gap between regions,the urbanization process and the impacts of differences in industrial structure on the energy system.