Integrated Development of Economic Growth, Energy Consumption, and Environment Protection from Different Regions: Based on City Level

Abstract

Guangdong Province is the first batch of national low carbon pilots of China. Studying the interrelationships of economic growth, energy consumption, and environment protection is important for exploring its sustainable development pattern. We evaluated the evolutions of energy efficiency (energy consumption per unit of GDP) and per capital GDP for the cities governed by the Guangdong Province. Furthermore, decoupling situation of energy consumption from GDP growth was investigated based on the IGT model. Results indicated that 21 cities governed by Guangdong Province can be classified into three categories: HH City (High economical and technical level), LH City (low economic and high technical level), and LL City (low economic and low technical level). Following the tendency of L-shaped growth, cities in the backward region transferred to the developed region gradually from 2005 to 2013. There is no necessary correlation between the decoupling state and the development stage for these cities. In addition, very few cities are in the state of absolute decoupling from 2005 to 2013, suggesting there is huge potential for energy-saving and increasing energy efficiency for Guangdong Province. Moreover, the interrelations of economy, environment, and energy are studied for these 21 cities. Results showed that serious imbalance of economic development and environment protection existed within the border of Guangdong Province.