数字经济发展与我国城市能源效率的提升

The Development of Digital Economy and the Improvementof Urban Energy Efficiency in China

当下我国数字经济发展如火如荼,“十四五”规划也提出“要打造数字经济新优势”。与此同时,“碳达峰”和“碳中和”是我国当下的重要发展任务,也是经济转型升级阶段的重大挑战。能源使用效率作为其中的一个关键衡量指标,研究数字经济是否对其具有提升作用亟待探讨。本文采用非期望产出DEA-SBM方法测算了能源效率,基于中国280个城市2011—2019年的面板数据进行实证研究。结果表明:数字经济的发展显著提升了城市能源效率,并且该结论在进行稳健性检验后依然成立。另外,数字经济发展对城市能源效率的影响存在地区、时间段和城市规模异质性,具体表现为:数字经济发展对能源效率的提升在东部地区的表现强于中西部地区,从2011—2014年的不显著负向影响到2015—2019年的正向提升,对大中小城市的正向影响强于特大城市。最后,机制分析表明,数字经济对能源效率的提升更多的是通过增加总产出而非减少非期望污染物排放。

The development of China’s digital economy is in full swing,and the 14th Five-Year Plan also proposes"to build a new advantage of digital economy".At the same time,"emission peak"and"carbon neutrality"are important development tasks in China now,and also a major challenge in the stage of economic transformation and upgrading.Energy efficiency is a key indicator,so it is important to explore whether the digital economy will enhance it.In this paper,we measure energy efficiency by using the undesirable output DEA-SBM method and conduct an empirical study based on panel data of 280 cities in China from 2011 to 2019.The results show that the development of the digital economy significantly improves urban energy efficiency,and the findings still hold after robustness test.In addition,there is regional,time period and city size heterogeneity in the impact of digital economy development on urban energy efficiency,as shown by the fact that the improvement of energy efficiency by digital economy development is stronger in the eastern region than in the central and western regions,from a non-significant negative effect in 2011-2014 to a positive effect in 2015-2019,and the positive effect on small,medium and large cities is stronger than that of megacities.Finally,the mechanism analysis shows that the digital economy enhances energy efficiency more by increasing total output rather than reducing undesirable pollutant emissions.