• Energy Research

The Chinese government has grown increasingly invested in ecology in recent years. This paper discusses eco-efficiency using data envelopment analysis on 48 cities in Bohai Rim with special focus on the role of industrial structure upgrades. Based on the values from a super undesirable slack-based model, this study investigates eco-efficiency from temporal and spatial perspectives to reveal gaps among Bohai cities but an overall improvement in regional eco-efficiency. Moreover, this study adopts the Global and Local Moran's I to identify positive spatial autocorrelations and shows that most cites in Bohai Rim have high-high, low-low aggregation characteristics. Plus, the economic effects of per capita GDP, industrial structure upgrades on eco-efficiency are determined according to a spatial Durbin model. There appear to be negative spillover effects of industrial structure upgrades on surrounding cities, which reflects an industry transfer phenomenon related to eco-efficiency.

Improving energy efficiency and reducing environmental pollution emissions are two important ways to alleviate energy problems. Despite the progress in energy efficiency, the growth in energy demand still exceeds the efficiency improvements. This study adopts nonparametric methods to estimate the total factor energy efficiency (TFEE) of 105 resource-based cities covering the period 2010-2016 in China and analyzes the spatiotemporal characteristics of changes in energy efficiency. Furthermore, panel quantile regression is applied to analyze the multiple impacts of economic level, industrial structure, resource endowment, energy price, government intervention and degree of openness on energy efficiency. The main findings are as follows. (1) Each determinant has a different influence on TFEE at different levels; among them, the influence of the fuel and energy price index show an inverted U-shaped distribution as the quantile increases, and that of the GDP per capita shows a stronger heterogeneity than those of other factors. (2) Resource-based cities with lower efficiency are more sensitive to government intervention than are cities with higher efficiency. (3) A city's openness has a negative effect on TFEE, which partly supports the pollution haven hypothesis: the more foreign investment a resource-based city receives, the lower its energy and technology efficiency. Finally, some practical suggestions for the sustainable development of resource-based cities are discussed.