Analyzing the impact of energy synergy and renewable energy generation on energy security: Empirical evidence from China's Yangtze River Delta region

Abstract

As a representative region with poor energy resource endowment in China, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region poses a pressing and vital issue for research on energy security. This study offers a comprehensive assessment of energy security levels (ESL) in the YRD region of China from 2000 to 2019, emphasizing the pivotal role of electricity indicators in energy transition using a combination optimization model of the entropy method and CRITIC method. Subsequently, we employed a coupling synergy degree model to further quantify the energy synergy among different YRD provinces and to verify the effects of energy synergy and renewable energy generation (REG) on the ESL of the YRD region. The findings highlight supply security as the central concern for safeguarding energy security. The YRD region's ESL ranking is as follows: Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, and Shanghai. There is a significant linear correlation between energy synergy and ESL, with Zhejiang and Jiangsu experiencing a notably greater effect of energy synergy on ESL than Anhui. A pronounced U-shaped relationship between REG and ESL is evident in the Jiangsu and Anhui provinces. The impact of REG on ESL is significant in Zhejiang province but negligible in Shanghai.