The Study On The Impact Of Urbanization On Environment And Its Regional Differences—

For a long time, energy supply and environment have challenged the development of urbanization in China. In the process of rapid urbanization, with the increase of energy demand, the contradiction between supply and demand has been showing, following with environmental problems caused by energy consumption. Thus, it is vital to establish energy security to support urbanization development.Considering the regional difference of urbanization level and development stage, impacts of urbanization on energy consumption and environment were discussed which was important to realize the sustainable development of urbanization and energy. It also provided a scientific basis of management policy for government and policy maker.Based on the indicators of urbanization and energy from1986to2011, urbanization index and environmental index were used to study the impacts of urbanization on environmental pressure of energy consumption in this paper. In order to achieve the above goals, the following three aspects of research were made. Firstly, the mechanism of urbanization’s impacts on energy consumption and the resulting environmental pressure was discussed. Secondly, the dynamic response of population urbanization, comprehensive urbanization and environmental pressure was verified using national-level data. Lastly, according to the status of urbanization and environmental pressure in different areas, panel data of30cities was chosen to analyze the regional differences of impact mechanism of urbanization to environmental pressure.Conclusions were drawn as follows:(1) Urbanization affected energy from four aspects which were population, economic, society and space. The influence on environmental varied with the change of energy consumption structure.(2) Long-term stable relation was existed among urbanization rate, urbanization index and environmental pressure. Urbanization index had greater intensity on environmental pressure in the early, while urbanization rate had greater impact in the late period. In the short term, the main factor leading to the increase of environmental pressure was itself rather than urbanization. In medium and long term, both environment and urbanization worked together to make a change to environmental pressure.(3) During the process of urbanization, urbanization rate was significant positive with environmental pressure, while proportion of tertiary industry and energy efficiency were negative.(4) The impacts of urbanization on environmental pressure had regional differences:the high-urbanized area have greater impacts than the low-urbanized area among urbanization rate, proportion of tertiary industry and energy efficiency; population density was positive with environmental pressure in high-urbanized area while negative in low-urbanized area; per capita investment in fixed assets was positive with environmental pressure in high-urbanized area and traffic density was positive with environmental pressure in low-urbanized area.According to the above results, some suggestions are proposed to guarantee the coordinated development of urbanization, environment and energy, which are energy structure adjustment, improvement of urbanization level and industrial structure optimization and so on.