Abstract
Energy efficiency has proved to be effective in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and is significant to carbon neutrality targets. Urban agglomeration is the major engine of urbanization supporting economic growth. To optimizing the spatial exchange structure to improve regional energy efficiency by integrating the total factor energy efficiency model and social network analysis, this study constructs the spatial network of energy efficiency among cities within five major urban agglomerations in China for the period 2011–2018 and investigates their spatial association characteristics. The influencing factors of each spatial network structure are also explored by the quadratic assignment procedure method. The findings show that the spatial association of energy efficiency within each urban agglomeration presents a typical network structure, but with considerable disparity among urban agglomerations. Most cities in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta are closely connected with each other, while the surrounding cities in the areas of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Chengyu and the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River highly depend on their corresponding central cities. The spatial adjacency and GDP per capita determine the urban spatial relationship of the energy efficiency within urban agglomerations. In addition, the spatial correlation of urban energy efficiency in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Chengyu and Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River areas is also affected by the differences in energy consumption, capital stock, number of labor force and pollutant emission. Some suggestions for improving urban energy efficiency are discussed.
Highlights
IntroductionUrban agglomeration, as an advanced spatial expressional form of integrated cities, can be the major engine of the urbanization for prosperous economic growth [3], and has encouraged widespread interests among the urban studies and geography communities [4]
We address the gap by introducing the social network analysis method into the investigation of energy efficiency’s spatial structure characteristics in the China’s major urban agglomeration areas, i.e., Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River
This study focuses on the spatial structure relationship of energy efficiency in the national urban agglomerations through constructing the association network of the urban total factor energy efficiency
Summary
Urban agglomeration, as an advanced spatial expressional form of integrated cities, can be the major engine of the urbanization for prosperous economic growth [3], and has encouraged widespread interests among the urban studies and geography communities [4]. The development of urban agglomeration confronts challenges, especially on global climate change. Responsible for more than 70% of greenhouse gas emissions [5] and 67–76% of global energy use [6], urban areas have become the main battlefield in the fight against environmental and climate change. The process of urban agglomeration is proven to be able to alleviate greenhouse gas emissions [6]; a significant gap in achieving net zero emissions by the middle of the century still exists [7], and urban resilience for sustainable development is increasing [8].
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