Abstract
Sustainable development has always been an important issue for all policy makers, even more so now, as global warming has seriously threatened the whole world. To understand the efficacy of regional sustainable policies, we proposed a dynamic, two-stage, slacks-based measure (SBM) model with carry-over and intermediate variables, highlighting the importance of an electricity portfolio, to measure overall energy performance for the purpose of regional sustainable development. In this unified linear programming framework with intertemporal evaluation, we estimated the effects of a clean electricity supply by the abatement of CO2 emissions and the gain of economic growth. The results can be used as a reference for decision makers to shape regional sustainable development policies. Using data of 30 provincial administration regions in China for the period of 2012–2017, we postulate that the lower energy performance of the Chinese regional economic system for sustainable development may be attributed to a lower electricity portfolio performance. We then postulate that investment in low-carbon energy infrastructure can combat CO2 emissions, and is also a major driving force in the regional economic growth.
Highlights
Over the last decade, global warming has become aggravated, and extreme weather conditions have threatened the living environment of all species
Parameters Setting on the Proposed Dynamic Two-Stage slacks-based measure (SBM) Model
In this paper, we assumed that both the electricity portfolio stage and the energy productivity stage had the same contribution to the overall energy performance for regional sustainable development, and assigned each stage with the same weight of 0.5
Summary
Global warming has become aggravated, and extreme weather conditions have threatened the living environment of all species. The culprit is believed to be the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels [1,2,3]. Because energy is always indispensable among the many resources required to support economic development, the overdependence on fossil fuels had gone unchallenged for a long time, especially in developing countries [4]. As China experienced unprecedented economic growth after the nation’s markets were opened up to the world, it has become the world’s largest GHG emitter [2]. Sustainable development has become a priority on every government’s policy plate. Electrification and decarbonizing the production of electricity have become major directives in long-term sustainable development [5].
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