Low-energy development in China

Abstract

Energy is a nonrenewable resource. Hence, long-term sustainable development cannot be guaranteed by an increase in energy efficiency but to use the least energy as possible. Therefore, this article builds an index of low-energy development (LEDI) to describe the shift from high-energy development to LEDI. This research, which uses Chinese provincial data set, reveals that the LEDI of China is at the low level, but has a significant upward trend after 2005.

Keywords:

• energy
• low-energy development
• data envelopment analysis
• nonrenewable

JEL Classification:

• C1
• O1

Funding

This research was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71373297], [grant number 71133007] and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of Ministry of Education of China [grant number NCET-10-0883].

Notes

¹ Due to the availability of data, the sample does not include Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Tibet.

² Table 3 describes the compositions of East China, Middle China and West China.