Coordinated economic, energy and environment development across China from 2001 to 2020

ABSTRACT

With the development of China’s economy, the contradiction between energy, economy and ecological environment is becoming more and more prominent. However, the spatial and temporal evolution of the contradiction system of energy, economy and environment all over China is rarely focused on. This study assesses the provincial coordinated degree of the economy-energy-environment system over the period of 2001–2020 and analyzes their spatial and temporal evolution using principal component analysis (PCA), a coordination degree model, non-parametric Kernel Density Estimation (KDE), and spatial correlation analysis approaches. Results show that provincial coordination degrees from 2001 to 2020 vary between ‘barely balanced’ and ‘superiorly balanced’ with an overall improvement. However, the gap between high and low regional coordination has widen, while middle-level provinces gradually increase and are distributed more evenly. Limited spatial correlation of provincial coordination exists and the clustering level slightly increases over 2001–2020. Additionally, some less-developed regions, which are still staying at the ‘intermediately balanced’ state in 2020, call for attention.

KEYWORDS:

• Coordinated development
• economy-energy-environment system
• dynamic evolution
• spatial distribution
• China

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Q43
• Q53
• R11

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation (No. 22YJC790167). Bin Zhao and Shuxiao Wang acknowledge the support of Tsinghua-Toyota Joint Research Institute.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2023.2250638

Notes

1. https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx_662805/202210/t20221025_10791908.html

2. https://www.mee.gov.cn/ywgz/fgbz/bz/bzwb/dqhjbh/dqhjzlbz/201203/t20120302_224165.htm

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the the Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China [22YJC790167]; Tsinghua-Toyota Joint Research Institute [000].