Sustainable Performance of Low-Carbon Energy Infrastructure Investment on Regional Development: Evidence from China

Abstract

In the 13th Five-Year Plan, the Chinese government declared that one of the sustainable policy priorities is improving the energy supply composition in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In accordance with the Plan, the Guangdong government subsequently planned to invest in low-carbon energy infrastructure from 2016 to 2020. Using data from Guangdong province and other regions in China for 2007–2016, we propose a two-stage network data envelopment analysis (Network DEA) model to examine the sustainable performance of the Chinese regional/provincial economic system. We postulated that the less sustainable performance of Chinese regional economic systems may be attributed to lower energy productivity performance. However, we found that increased governmental and industrial spending on electricity mix improvement by building new low-carbon power plants created momentum in Guangdong’s economic growth, which experienced an annual rise of roughly 1.16%. Finally, the results from the two-stage Network DEA model showed that Guangdong fared better than other provinces with respect to sustainable performance. Investment in low-carbon energy infrastructure is not only a measure to combat CO2 emission, but could act as the driving force of regional economic systems.

Measuring Energy Performance for Regional Sustainable Development in China: A New Framework based on a Dynamic Two-Stage SBM Approach

“…ThermalE was given a free link, which may increase or decrease in the optimal problem of Equation (4); CleanE had a good link, as it was the desirable output from the electricity portfolio stage due to zero CO 2 emissions. Any shortages of ThermalE and CleanE of observed DMU were counted as inefficient performance, as demonstrared in Eqution (2).…”

“…The overall energy performance of provincial regions in China could be estimated by the Equations (1) and (2). To understand the applicability of our model, we also compared our evaluation results to those using other SBM models, including two-stage SBM models without carry-over activities, and regular single-stage SBM models; further details are discussed in the following section.…”

“…Over the last decade, global warming has become aggravated, and extreme weather conditions have threatened the living environment of all species. The culprit is believed to be the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels [1][2][3]. However, because energy is always indispensable among the many resources required to support economic development, the overdependence on fossil fuels had gone unchallenged for a long time, especially in developing countries [4].…”

“…However, because energy is always indispensable among the many resources required to support economic development, the overdependence on fossil fuels had gone unchallenged for a long time, especially in developing countries [4]. As China experienced unprecedented economic growth after the nation's markets were opened up to the world, it has also become the world's largest GHG emitter [2]. In order to fight climate change, the consensus is for the world to abate CO 2 emissions, so that the Earth's temperature rises by no more than 1.5 • C. Sustainable development has thus become a priority on every government's policy plate.…”

Effects of Producer and Transmission Reliability on the Sustainability Assessment of Power System Networks

“…Power network sustainability-reliability is an important aspect of an energy generationtransmission system because the electricity demand of a group of customers needs to be assured at every instant of time with the lowest possible price and the least damage to the environment and society [1][2][3][4]. The reliability of a power network is usually dependent on the uncertainties associated with generation [5][6][7][8][9], transmission (and distribution) [10][11][12], load demand [13][14][15], and the presence of unexpected catastrophic events [16][17][18].…”