China׳s regional balanced development based on the investment in power grid infrastructure

Fang Yang, Dingzhong Zhang and Chuanwang Sun

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2016, vol. 53, issue C, 1549-1557

Abstract: Due to the stark reality of regional development disparities, China has to confront the sustainable development challenges brought about by social inequality. To compensate for these regional differences in natural resource endowments, effective investment in power grid infrastructure (PGI) and improvement of power grids might prove helpful in reducing poverty and narrowing the development gap. This paper constructs a “Peripheral Degree Index” (PDI) of power grid to measure the effective distance between electricity delivering areas and receiving regions. Moreover we discuss how to efficiently locate the investment in PGI and optimize the allocation of limited financial resources. The results show investment in PGI has higher marginal benefit for less developed provinces in energy delivering regions; and more importantly, improvement of the grid infrastructure in central areas which connect energy receiving and delivering regions. Particularly, to improve the grid facilities in the central areas could reduce electricity transmission cost and help to alleviate the railway strain for coal transportation. Therefore, our findings suggest that it is more advisable to locate the investment of power grid infrastructure in the central provinces that are located at strategic conjunctions of the nationwide power grid, including Shanxi, Henan, Hubei and Hebei.

Keywords: Infrastructure; Human Development Index; Peripheral Degree Index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2015.09.066

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