Urbanization moderates the transitional linkages between energy resource use, greenhouse gas emissions, socio-economic and human development: Insights from subnational analyses in China

Abstract

Sustainable energy use and management are key to improving human well-being, while rapid urbanization intersecting with economic development makes it challenging. Extensive cross-national analyses on this topic can inform the global agenda; however, far fewer subnational explorations consider the impact of urbanization in moderating the relationships between energy resource use, greenhouse gas emissions, socio-economic and human development. Therefore, this research analyzed Chinese subnational data from 2000 to 2019 to reveal the dynamic relationship between energy use and objective human well-being and explored how urbanization moderated the transitional linkages from energy use to economic development to human need satisfiers and to human well-being. This research found a diminishing return from energy use (both primary energy extraction and final energy use) to the Human Development Index (HDI) from 2000 to 2019. Moreover, in later years, there was neither a linear correlation nor a log-linear relationship between energy use and HDI at the subnational level. In contrast, HDI was consistently strongly correlated with GDP per capita and household income at the subnational level in China over time. Two distinct energy-GDP pathways, i.e., high energy use-low GDP and low energy use-high GDP, were observed at the subnational level, which explained why the log-linear relationship between HDI and energy use/GHGs diminished over time. Urbanization level had a significant moderating impact on the linkages between human need satisfiers and HDI, as well as life expectancy. Subnational policies should prioritize different human need satisfiers in different urbanization periods.