Abstract
As typical representatives of China’s industrial sectors, energy intensive industries are the focus of energy conservation. This study constructs a trans-log production function and stochastic frontier analysis model to analyze the impact of energy price distortion on total factor energy efficiency in energy intensive industries on the city level. The results reveal that the phenomenon of energy price distortion existed in all cities from 2003 to 2019, with an average degree of −0.175; and the total factor energy efficiency in China’s energy intensive sectors showed an upward trend, with an average efficiency of 0.729. Further deep analysis of affecting mechanisms concluded that the price distortion showed a significant restraining effect on improving energy efficiency, while the improvement of urban agglomeration systems had an opposite effect. In addition, energy consumption structure, foreign trade, and infrastructure construction are positively correlated with energy efficiency. Therefore, promoting the market-oriented reform of China’s energy market is of great significance to improve city energy efficiency and build a resource-conserving society.
Highlights
As basic industries for national economic development, energy intensive industries (EIIs) have made important contributions to accelerate economic growth but input plenty of fossil energy in the production process
The quantities of energy input are impacted by energy prices, as the essence of market resource allocation is to realize the allocation of production factors in different sectors according to the change of prices [1]
Haider and Bhat [35] measured the energy efficiency of India’s paper industry, and the results showed that energy saving potential, industrial structure and capital intensity had a positive impact on the energy effective utilizing level, while labor productivity had no significant impact
Summary
As basic industries for national economic development, energy intensive industries (EIIs) have made important contributions to accelerate economic growth but input plenty of fossil energy in the production process. The average growth rate of energy input in EIIs increased by 7.25%, higher than that in the whole industry (6.63%) and on a national level (6.72%). The quantities of energy input are impacted by energy prices, as the essence of market resource allocation is to realize the allocation of production factors in different sectors according to the change of prices [1]. Price distortion will lead to misinformation in the energy market, which cannot accurately reflect the relationship between supply and demand, resulting in low allocation efficiency [2]
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