Research On The Impact Of High-speed Rail Opening On Energy Efficiency

For more than 40 years of reform and opening up,China’s economic development has made a "qualitative" leap,which is inseparable from the improvement of transportation infrastructure.Transportation is regarded as the new blood to promote social progress and enhance the vitality of competition.It can not only drive the flow of population,capital and other factors,but also indirectly affect related industries and industries,and plays a pivotal role.Although my country’s high-speed rail started relatively late,it has achieved several major speed increases and has relatively mature R&D technologies.Currently,my country is committed to the construction of a "eight vertical and eight horizontal" high-speed rail network,which will surely bring more significant results.However,with the rapid economic development,many problems have arisen,such as over-exploitation of energy,low production efficiency,and environmental pollution.Energy efficiency is a leading indicator to measure the quality of economic development,and its efficiency will directly affect the transformation of regional production methods.Compared with developed countries such as the United States,my country’s energy efficiency value is low,which further reflects the lack of certain technology,capital and other production factors of enterprises.Therefore,how to improve energy efficiency has become a hot topic discussed by scholars.Through existing research,it can be found that industrial structure and production technology are the two key factors affecting energy efficiency,and high-speed rail,the transportation infrastructure,as a pillar industry,has a broad impact on the industrial structure and the level of regional innovation.Therefore,studying the impact of high-speed rail on energy efficiency has important theoretical and practical significance.This article first uses basic theories such as new economic geography,environmental economic geography and externalities,and analyzes the impact mechanism of high-speed rail on green energy efficiency.Then select appropriate indicators from the perspective of multi-input-multi-output,use the SBM-DEA method to calculate the energy efficiency values of 280 prefecture-level cities in my country from 2004 to 2017,and analyze their trend changes and regional differences.Finally,in the empirical analysis part,energy efficiency is regarded as the explanatory variable,and the opening of high-speed rail is used as the core explanatory variable to construct a double difference model to measure the impact of high-speed rail on energy efficiency.The conclusion is as follows: Energy efficiency generally shows a downward trend and then an upward trend.The benchmark regression and PSM-DID results both show that high-speed rail has a negative impact on energy efficiency.In terms of the impact mechanism,three interactive items of high-speed rail and opening-up level,industrial structure,and technical level were made,and it was concluded that the synergy between high-speed rail and industrial structure and technological level respectively promoted the improvement of energy efficiency.The conclusion that the interaction term reduces energy efficiency,and further considers the heterogeneity of the three major regions of East,Central and West,and the size of the city.The results prove that the differences between regions make the high-speed rail have different degrees of impact on energy efficiency,and the last part of the empirical shows the previous empirical evidence It is robust.Finally,this article puts forward corresponding countermeasures and suggestions based on related theories and empirical analysis.