Research on the evaluation of China’s regional energy security and influencing factors

ABSTRACT

Significant increases in energy demand and a higher pressure on energy supply pose a great threat to energy security. This study evaluated the level of regional energy security in China and explored the influencing factors of energy security based on the spatial lag model. The results show that China’s overall and regional energy security is generally not high. Technological progress, ecological environment, and energy production can improve energy security, while energy consumption intensity, and population size negatively affect regional energy security. Moreover, the results indicate that the marginal effect of energy consumption intensity on energy security decreases as the technological level increases. Therefore, encouraging the development of high-tech industries, controlling the size of the population, stabilizing international energy supply, and strengthening foreign cooperation are of great significance to the improvement of energy security.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy security
• entropy topsis
• spatial lag model
• effect decomposition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China[20ZDA084]; the National Natural Science Foundation of China[Grant Nos. 71934001, 71471001, 41771568, 71533004]; the National Key Research and Development Program of China[Grant No. 2016YFA0602500]; and the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences[Grant No. XDA23070400].