Research On Urban Air Pollutants Emission Reduction Performance And Abatement Path

The problem of urban air pollution in China currently is becoming more and more serious.In recent years,severe haze happened frequently in China,which not only affects the normal production and people’s life,but also seriously threatens people’s health.In this context,people began to pay more attention to energy efficiency and environmental performance,seeking to achieve greater output while less pollutants and energy consumption.Measuring energy efficiency and environmental performance can provide quantitative information for energy and environmental policy analysis and decision-making.This paper proposes a new non-radial biennial Luenberger energy and environmental performance index(EEPI)to measure the energy and environmental performance(EEP)change in various Chinese cities.The sources of EEP change,in terms of technical efficiency change and technological change,are examined by Luenberger EEPI.Spatial distribution of the energy and environmental performance and factors influencing the emission abatement potential are investigated by employing Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis and geographically weighted regression model,respectively.This paper analyzed the current situation of energy conservation and emission reduction in Chinese cities by comparing the spatial and temporal distribution differences of energy and environmental performance and the influencing factors of emission reduction potential at the city level,which lays a foundation for the following benchmark path design of air pollution reduction.Different cities have high heterogeneity in resource endowment,industrial structure,technological conditions and economic development level.Under the same social resources input,different types of cities can release different energy-saving and emission reduction potential.This study attempts to design a unique step-by-step benchmarking path about air pollutants reduction for the typical cities of different types of citiesWe find that(1)changes in EEP can be attributed to technological progress but that technological progress slows down across the study period;(2)The best performers possess advanced service industries and either consume less energy or have inherently high ecological quality,while the worst performers depend on abundant coal and nonferrous metal resources to support economic development.(3)the best performers begin to move from the coastal to inland cities with the less resource consumption and higher ecological quality;(4)the soot emission performance experiences a downtrend among four specific sub-performances in line with the truth that severe haze happened frequently in China;(5)cities with the strongest positive effect in regards to pollution intensity on emission abatement potential are located in the areas around the Bohai Gulf,where air pollution is particularly severe.(6)Finally,according to the city’s characteristics,this paper helps typical cities’ administrators to design an appropriate benchmarking path of air pollutants reduction performance,and summaries the law of benchmarking path of urban air pollutants reduction performance.