Towards balanced low-carbon development: Driver and complex network of urban-rural energy-carbon performance gap in China

Chong Xu

Applied Energy, 2023, vol. 333, issue C, No S0306261923000272

Abstract: While extensive studies focused on income inequality between the urban and rural, the corresponding energy-carbon performance (ECP) gap which describes differences in energy consumption and CO2 emission simultaneously, is ignored to a large extent for an emerging economy in particular. This could hinder formulating policy towards energy saving and emission reduction in the residential sector as well as public welfare improvement. To fill the gap above, the study explored the source and spatial pattern of urban–rural ECP gap in 30 China’s provinces over 2005–2019, by developing income-based meta-frontier decomposition analysis and social network analysis. We found that ECP in the urban areas were generally greater than that in the rural areas, partly supporting energy consumption ladder theory in China. Urban-rural ECP gaps in most provinces were becoming increasingly obvious. The efficiency loss effect and the innovation effect were important causes of widening the urban–rural ECP gap while the technological progress of energy-carbon use in various regions was unbalanced. Further, the original hierarchical ECP gap spatial correlation structure has been improved while provinces exhibited significant heterogeneity. We suggest that policymakers can focus on narrowing the urban–rural ECP gap by vigorously developing the digital economy, promoting urban–rural integration and energy efficiency with advanced technology.

Keywords: Energy-carbon performance gap; Urban and rural; Meta-frontier decomposition analysis; Social network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261923000272
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:333:y:2023:i:c:s0306261923000272

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.120663

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().