Regional Disparities Of China's Energy Intensity Analysis

Energy is not only necessary material basis for the survival of human society, but also is an important strategic resource for a country. As economy grows and society develops, energy will play a more and more important role in one's economy.During the past 20 years in China, great achievements have been made in economic development, at the same time energy consumption has also increased. China has become the second largest energy consumer in the world, and accounts for 14.7% in the world total energy consumption in 2005. In order to alleviate the pressure from increasingly serious shortage of energy resources and environmental pollution, also to make efforts to increase energy conservation, a goal of energy saving and consumption reduction is set forth explicitly in the "11th Five-Year" plan, that is, to double pre-capital GDP in 2010 than that in 2000 and simultaneously to reduce unit GDP energy consumption by 20% than that in the end of the "10th Five-Year". However, only 1.23% was reduced in unit GDP energy consumption than the last year for already past the first year of the "11th Five-Year" plan- 2006.Vast as the China is, tremendous differences exist in energy consumption for different regions due to different status of energy resources and economic development. Without distinguishing conditions and consideration of regional differences, it will be difficult for China to achieve the goal of energy consumption, even backfired.For the above concerns, using regional difference of energy consumption as the main line and based on energy intensity indicator, a panel data models of regional energy consumption intensity is set up. The thesis analyzes the long-term and short-term factors affecting regional differences of energy intensity in China; puts forward that it should be necessary for every region to consider general factors that affect the energy intensity, and also particular factors in its own region when establishes some energy-saving measures, and treat macro-control policies distinguishingly to realize regional energy conservation.The thesis draws the conclusions that: as far as the long-term trend and short-term fluctuation of energy consumption intensity is concerned, the impact of the proportion of heavy industry output value and the structure of energy consumption on high energy-consuming region is much greater, therefore structure adjustment will be more effective to energy-saving in this region, and fixed assets investment has a greater impact on mid and high energy-consuming regions. Although the long-term price elasticities are high in mid and high energy-consuming regions, short-term fluctuation of energy price is insignificant to all regions. The ownership structure only has a long-term impact on all regions. Energy consumption intensity in low energy-consuming region reacts more sensitively to short-term fluctuation of economic factors, and while high energy-consuming region has a slowly adjustment to these short-term fluctuation, greater long-term energy-saving potential will be available in this region.