Abstract
Air quality has become an important sustainability concern for China’s highly developed economic regions. Taking Jiangsu Province as a case, this study investigates the effect of energy consumption on air quality when both considering and not considering control variables, such as industrial structure, energy consumption structure and energy efficiency from 2006 to 2015 and further explores the influence of the related policies on air quality and the relationship between energy consumption and air quality. One important finding is that the relationship between energy consumption and the air quality index of Jiangsu Province shows a U-shaped curve and it is now in the increasing part of the curve, which reveals the effectiveness of controlling energy consumption in improving air quality. Another important finding is that, when considering the effect of related polices, there is still a U-shaped curve relationship between energy consumption and air quality index, with the opening of curve becoming bigger and the influence of energy consumption on air quality becoming more obvious. Moreover, although air quality is improved whether considering policies separately or together, the effect of combined policies is better than is the effect of a separate policy. This not only reflects the effectiveness of related polices but also shows the importance of policy coordination. Furthermore, a 1% optimization of industrial structure inhibits air quality index by 0.0054%, while the relationship of energy efficiency and energy consumption structure with air quality is inconsistent with theoretical analysis. This implies that, in practice, there is still room for improvement in both energy saving and emission reduction and even in air quality improvement. This study may help the stakeholders, whether from Jiangsu Province, other provinces in China or other countries at the global level, identify the impacts of energy consumption on air quality and formulate effective energy saving and air quality improvement policies in conjunction with their economic characteristics.
Highlights
China’s economy has seen rapid development in recent years, in line with serious environmental problems; the issue of ambient air quality has aroused widespread concern
First, in terms of sequence characteristics, the range of fluctuations of industrial structure, energy consumption structure and energy efficiency of Jiangsu Province is modest; second, the impact of energy consumption on air quality is a comprehensive result of many factors, with the final effect depending on the interplay of all factors—the effects of the path variables might be offset by the effects of other factors; third, the energy consumption structure is subject to resource endowment and the technology level cannot be optimized quickly in the short term—because of the rebound effect of technology, the improvement of energy efficiency is not conducive to energy saving and emissions’ reduction in the short term
This paper explores the effect of energy consumption on air quality in Jiangsu Province and further investigates the influence of related policies on the relationship between energy consumption and air quality, based on the Regression Discontinuity Design method
Summary
China’s economy has seen rapid development in recent years, in line with serious environmental problems; the issue of ambient air quality has aroused widespread concern. Most studies have confirmed the relationship between energy consumption and air quality and have primarily focused on general analysis of pollutant emissions and energy structure. This provides some research ideas and reference directions for future scholars and lays down a certain theoretical foundation for further discussion on air quality improvement. From the perspective of energy consumption, this paper analyzes the mechanism underlying the effect of energy consumption on air quality, based on the existing theoretical foundation and explores the coupling relationship between energy consumption and air quality in Jiangsu Province, in addition to measuring comprehensively how the former affects the latter.
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