• Energy Research

Abstract This paper contributes to the existing literature as well as policy debates by examining energy intensity and its determinants in China's regional economies. The analysis is based on a comprehensive database of China's regional energy balance constructed for this project. Through its focus on regional China, this study extends the existing literature, which mainly covers nationwide studies. It is found in this paper that energy intensity declined substantially in China. The main contributing factor is the improvement in energy efficiency. Changes in the economic structure have so far affected energy intensity modestly. Thus there is considerable scope to reduce energy intensity through the structural transformation of the Chinese economy in the future.

Abstract This paper focuses on the relationship between the world oil price and China's coke price, particularly with respect to extreme movements in the world oil price. Based on a daily sample from 2009 to 2015 and the ARJI-GARCH models and copulas, our empirical results show that China's coke price and the world oil price are characterized by GARCH volatility and jump behaviors. Specifically, negative oil price shocks lead to falls in China's coke returns on the following day while positive oil prices have no significant effects. In addition, current coke returns positively respond to the very recent oil price jump intensity, and a time-varying and volatile lower tail dependence is found between the world oil price and China's coke price. Our results are expected to have implications for coke producers and users and policy makers.

Sustained economic growth in China has triggered a surge of energy imports, especially oil imports. This paper investigates the determinants of China's energy import demand by using cointegraiton and VECM techniques. The findings suggest that, in the long run, growth of industrial production and expansion of transport sectors affect China's oil imports, while domestic energy output has a substitution effect. Thus, as the Chinese economy industrializes and the automotive sector expands, China's oil imports are likely to increase. Though China's domestic oil production has a substitution effect on imports, its growth is limited due to scarce domestic reserve and high exploration costs. It is anticipated that China will be more dependent on overseas oil supply regardless of the world oil price.

This paper aims to investigate the factors affecting carbon emissions from the perspective of residential energy consumption. Specifically, through an index decomposition analysis (IDA), it examines the influence of social and economic factors on household carbon emissions in China's provinces. The results show that CO2 emissions associated with household consumption continued to grow during the decade of 2000–2010. In general, per capita consumption expenditure and the share of energy consumption expenditure in total consumption spending are two main factors contributing to an increase in residential carbon emissions, while the change of energy consumption structure and energy price mitigated the growth of carbon emissions. However, there are considerable regional differences. Therefore, Chinese government must consider the substantial contribution of residential consumption to carbon emissions when it aims to expand domestic consumption.

This paper employs the system generalised method of moments approach and panel data of Chinese resource‐based cities at the prefecture level for the period of 2003–2019 to investigate the effects of two types of service sector agglomeration on industrial structure dynamics. The results show that an increase in ‘specialised agglomeration’ of services would inhibit industrial structure rationalisation and upgrading. However, an increase in ‘diversified’ agglomeration of services promotes industrial structure upgrading though it also inhibits industrial structure rationalisation. Furthermore, it is also found that an increase in diversified agglomeration would inhibit industrial structure rationalisation in eastern cities and industrial structure upgrading in western cities but promote industrial structure rationalisation and upgrading in central cities. These insights suggest the importance of fostering the appropriate form of service sector agglomeration within resource‐based cities. Leveraging the synergistic linkages between the service sector and other industries could enhance the industrial structure optimisation of resource‐based urban economies.

This paper investigates environmental efficiency and its distribution dynamics in Chinese cities. The analyses are applied the meta-frontier data envelopment analysis and the continuous dynamic dis...

Abstract This paper adopts the Malmquist index approach to investigate multi-product energy trade efficiency and its determinants from an empirical perspective. Using trade statistics of coal, oil and gas of 40 countries over the period of 1995 to 2008, we found that the efficiency of bilateral energy trade ranged between 0.26 and 0.35 when imperfect substitution between different energy products is taken into account. This measure is significantly lower than those obtained from traditional gravity models. It suggests that the ability of cross-product substitution affects trade efficiency improvement which results from regional market integration and related trade policy. The results provide useful insights on predicting the pattern of future energy trade and hence have important implications for relevant countries to prioritize product-specific trade policies.

Abstract In response to the challenge of climate change, personal carbon trading was put forward as a policy instrument to promote low carbon behavior in the household sector. To evaluate the effectiveness of this scheme, it is important to gain insight into the allowance trading and energy consumption behavior in a long emission commitment period. This paper proposes a dynamic programming model to investigate allowance trading and energy consumption. A main feature of the model is its consideration of allowance banking and borrowing activities. Ten simulated scenarios with different allowance prices, price volatility and carbon emission rates are discussed. The findings show that consumers would trade more actively when allowance price is volatile. It is also found that energy consumption and allowance trading will decrease when the carbon emission rate increases. Overall the analysis in this paper implies that personal carbon trading scheme would be an effective policy measure to change consumers' behavior. Therefore it would be valuable for decision-makers to consider the introduction and implementation of this scheme.

Abstract To investigate the causality between US partisan conflict shock and crude oil return, this paper utilizes bootstrap full-sample Granger causality and bootstrap rolling window sub-sample Granger causality tests. Although no evidence supports the causal nexus between partisan conflict shock and crude oil return with full sample data, time-varied causality is observed for particular sub-samples. Such difference can be attributed to the parameter non-constancy in the VAR system. In terms of the empirical results, the US partisan conflict shock causes the fluctuations of the crude oil market in 2008–2009 and 2014–2015. However, such influence is temporary. Inversely, the crude oil return causes US partisan shock in 1985–1986, 1991–1994, 1998–2000 and 2012–2013. These findings indicate crude oil market significantly affects political stability of the US, especially during the periods of the Gulf War and OPEC production cut. The empirical results are robust in terms of both sample setting variation and window size selection.