High-speed rail and energy consumption in China: The intermediary roles of industry and technology

Abstract

Energy saving and emission reduction is largely constrained by industry and technology, and the transportation infrastructure of high-speed rail plays an important role in the development of industry and technology. However, there is still a gap between high-speed rail and energy consumption in extant literature. Using China's prefecture-level panel data, we investigate the impact of high-speed rail on city's energy consumption by Difference-in-Differences method and instrumental variable regressions. The results show that high-speed rail is conductive to reducing total energy consumption and energy consumption intensity through promoting industry agglomeration, industry upgrading and technological innovation. Meanwhile, we observe that the energy consumption reduction induced by high-speed rail is greater in peripheral cities than central cities, indicating that a greater spread effect rather than backwash effect exists in the high-speed rail network. This study fills the gap between high-speed rail and energy consumption, and confirms that high-speed rail has a positive energy-saving effect.