School of Urban and Regional Science, Institute of Finance and Economics Research, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, 200433, China.
School of Economics, Institute of Green Economy Development, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing, 210023, China.
J Environ Manage. 2020 Apr 1;259:110045. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.110045. Epub 2020 Jan 9.
China's rapid industrialization has induced water and energy shortage issue. Since water and energy resources are inextricably connected, the synergetic conservation of these two resources is conducive to China's sustainable development. In this paper, using a heterogeneous stochastic frontier model, we estimate the output and substitution elasticities of water and energy in China's industrial sector at the provincial level during the period of 2004-2014, in order to explore how to achieve synergetic conservation of water and energy resources by identifying the water-energy nexus. The results show that in China's industrial sector, the overall technical efficiency measured by the ratio of actual output to the ideal output in production frontier experienced a slight decline during the research period. The output elasticity (i.e., the changes in output caused by per unit change in a certain input) of water remains positive, while that of energy is negative in most years, indicating that water input increase contributes to industrial output growth, rather than energy input. Water and energy show a complementary relationship in most years, suggesting that a decrease in water input can reduce energy input. Therefore, to achieve the synergetic conservation of water and energy, the government should actively advance water-saving and energy-saving technologies by taking account of the differentiated production characteristics of different provincial-level industrial sector. In particular, when water and energy are complementary, the technological progress for saving either energy or water will be conducive to the synergetic conservation of these two resources.
中国的快速工业化导致了水和能源短缺问题。由于水和能源资源是紧密相连的，因此协同节约这两种资源有利于中国的可持续发展。本文利用非齐次随机前沿模型，估计了 2004-2014 年期间中国工业部门省级层面的水和能源产出和替代弹性，以通过识别水-能源关系来探讨如何实现水和能源资源的协同节约。结果表明，在我国工业部门，以生产前沿实际产出与理想产出之比衡量的整体技术效率在研究期间略有下降。水的产出弹性（即某一投入单位变化引起的产出变化）保持正值，而能源的产出弹性在大多数年份为负值，这表明水投入的增加有助于工业产出的增长，而不是能源投入。在大多数年份，水和能源呈互补关系，这表明减少水投入可以减少能源投入。因此，为了实现水和能源的协同节约，政府应考虑到不同省级工业部门的差异化生产特点，积极推进节水节能技术。特别是在水和能源互补的情况下，节约能源或水的技术进步将有利于这两种资源的协同节约。
