Abstract
The role of financial development (FD) in China’s environment has attracted extensive attention from scholars, but few studies involved the effect of FD on urban electricity consumption (EC). This paper constructs two spatial panel models to explore the interaction between FD and EC on the basis panel data of 278 cities in China from 2005 to 2016. The results show that electricity consumption of urban residents and industrial sector in China has obvious spatial correlation and unbalanced spatial distribution. Secondly, FD can promote urban industrial electricity consumption (IEC) and urban residential electricity consumption (REC), and it has a greater impact on REC than IEC. Thirdly, spatial heterogeneity is established, and the imbalance of REC and IEC among different regions and urban scales deserves more attention. FD is conducive to enhance REC and IEC in the eastern and western regions. Meanwhile, FD plays an important role in the increase of REC and IEC in small cities, large cities, and megacities of China. Considering the above results, this paper puts forward targeted policy recommendations.
Highlights
Electricity is an important energy source for ensuring the normal operation of the economy and society, which is clean, safe, and convenient
These results show that financial development (FD) has the characteristics of spatial clustering and spatial heterogeneity in China
These results show that residential electricity consumption (REC) and industrial electricity consumption (IEC) have the characteristics of spatial clustering and spatial heterogeneity in China
Summary
Electricity is an important energy source for ensuring the normal operation of the economy and society, which is clean, safe, and convenient. From 1978 to 2018, urban electricity consumption (EC) in China maintained a high growth rate with an average annual growth rate of 8.85%, and it has increased from 249.8 billion kWh in 1978 to 678.64 billion kWh in 2018. As China is in the stage of industrialization and rapid urbanization, the demand for electricity is expected to be even stronger in the near future. The Chinese government is exploring the mode of sustainable development actively. The 13th five-year plan for controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions released by the Chinese government proposes to vigorously develop green finance and increase investment in energy conservation and emission reduction industries [4]
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