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The high energy consumption and heavy air pollution caused by heating in winter have become increasingly severe in China in recent years. The policy of replacing coal-fired boilers with gas-fired boilers for central heating is of great significance to the sustainable development of China. This paper incorporates the factors involved in the policy into the energy-environment-economy (3E) system and transforms it into a multi-objective optimization problem. Combining with the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution, an acceptable and reasonable solution that can make the 3E system benign and economically profitable is obtained. Especially, grasping the appropriate proportion of clean heating and providing subsidies to heating enterprises are the keys for the government to implement the policy in a step-by-step manner to achieve good environmental and economic benefits. Taking Tianjin as an example, relevant works are carried out to study the demand for natural gas after the implementation of the policy, the investment cost of heating companies, the subsidy amount of government and gas emissions. The paper suggests that the proportion of heating by the gas-fired boiler is 34.7–35.7% and the subsidy price varies from 0.75 to 1.50 yuan/m3, which provides a reference for decision-making agencies.

The threat of global climate change has caused the international community to pay close attention to atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Transportation sector carbon dioxide emissions efficiency (TSCDEE) is a key indicator used to prioritize sustainable development in the transportation sector. In this paper, the epsilon-based measure data envelopment analysis model with undesirable outputs is applied to estimate TSCDEE for 30 provinces in China from 2010 to 2016. We also analyze influencing factors using the spatial Durbin model. Research shows that the overall TSCDEE of the Chinese provinces studied was 0.618, indicating that most regions are still in need of improvements. The provinces with the highest TSCDEE are located in developed coastal regions of China. This study shows that factors such as transportation structure, traffic infrastructure level, and technological progress have prominent positive effects on TSCDEE, while both urbanization level and urban population density exert significantly negative effects on TSCDEE. The findings should have a far-reaching impact on the sustainable development of global transportation.

The environment-friendly development of wind power is complicated as the atmospheric impacts of wind farms are difficult to measure. Wind power has made contributions to emission reduction, but it is undeniable that the substantial wind farms (SWFs) have had a non-negligible impact on the local ABL. This paper aims to provide a reliable methodological scheme and practical data for human beings to objectively understand the development of wind power. Based on the data from one of the Chinese gigawatt-scale wind power bases in Zhangbei County of Hebei Province, the mesoscale simulations were conducted to explore the impacts of substantial wind farms on the local and regional atmosphere. The results show that: (i) the impact of substantial wind farms on the local area is significant and sustained, while this impact on the regional area is slight and occasional; (ii) it can bring about the seasonal and diurnal differences in the local ABL property; (iii) it can not only induce the horizontal turbulence directly caused by wind turbine wake flow, but also produce the vertical mixing in the near-surface ABL. A systematic analysis of wind power potential and its atmospheric impact is urgent to ensure sustainable development of wind power.

The energy crisis is a major challenge to sustainable development. Governments therefore constantly seek ways to improve energy conservation. In this paper, our goal was to promote energy conservation and simultaneously increase employment. First, based on China's current regional energy conservation model, social energy costs and employment factors are comprehensively considered to construct an inter-provincial cooperative energy conservation model, the minimal core method is used to construct a cooperative interprovincial benefit-distribution model. Second, representative regions of China (Beijing, Shanghai, Shanxi, and Sichuan) were selected to demonstrate the model in an empirical analysis of cooperative provincial energy conservation. It was found that the total employment in Beijing, Shanghai, Shanxi, and Sichuan can be increased by 9.84 × 106 persons, and the total social energy cost can be decreased by US$59.22 × 106. The cooperative benefit distribution model can increase the total benefit by US$65.28 × 106. Finally, to verify the robustness and feasibility of the model, the sensitivity of the model to these changes is analyzed by changing the parameter values, and it was found that the model was both robust and feasible. The research results provide a new way to improve China's current energy conservation model.

In order to promote the sustainable development of the wind power industry, the Chinese Government has issued a series of related industrial policies. The promulgation of these policies not only greatly promotes the development of China's wind power sector, but may also generate potential contagion effects on other industries. This paper uses contagion tests based on linear dependence and higher-order co-moment statistics, such as co-skewness, co-volatility, and co-kurtosis, etc., to examine the contagion impacts of 8 relevant policies on 10 major economic industries in China for the period 2001–2018. The empirical results show that the wind power notices provide significant evidence of policy contagion than the national energy policies. Tail risk is more important in driving policy transmission as evident by third and fourth order co-moments which are significantly stronger than the correlation channel. It is not surprising that the financial sector is the industry most affected by the wind power sector in China, followed by the sectors of industrials and utilities which are closely related to the wind power.

The continuous diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT) has exerted growing influences on the production process and energy use. This paper analyzes the major drivers behind changes in China's energy intensity with emphasis on ICT and production structure using a three-tier structural decomposition analysis (SDA) approach. This approach could thoroughly quantify the various effects of ICT on energy intensity and investigate the mechanisms of ICT input change through which it affects sectoral energy consumption. The main results indicate that: (a) production structure exerted a rising negative effect on China's energy intensity change from 2002 to 2012; (b) ICT contributed to a 4.54% increment in energy intensity, yet ICT input substitution was conducive to reduce energy use in production; (c) the ICT effects were more significant in the service sector and technology-intensive sectors. The study suggests that the Chinese government should formulate measures for adjusting production structure, promoting sustainable development of ICT and harmonizing inter-sectoral ICT input level.

For all countries worldwide, energy economic security is an issue that needs extensive attention, even though the related focus areas might be different. Each country should ensure energy economic security and promote sustainable development according to its own specific situation. Nevertheless, the energy economic security of different countries have some common aspects. This paper discusses the connotation of energy economic security and the construction of an evaluation index system of regional energy economic security from the following four dimensions: energy industry development, energy supply capacity, energy utilization level, and energy environmental impact. Based on panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2009 to 2017, the global principal component analysis method is used to measure the level of regional energy economic security and the performance of each dimension in China. The results show that the energy economic security of China and its regions improved between 2009 and 2017. In the short term, improvement in China’s regional environmental regulation levels will reduce its energy economic security level, but the implementation of environmental policies can promote the green development of China’s regional economy. High-quality development of the economy, improvement in urbanization levels, increases in population density, the promotion of scientific and technological levels, and the upgrading of industrial structures jointly contribute to the advancement of regional energy economic security. In addition, the elevation of urbanization, population density, and energy economic security levels in other regions are also conducive to the energy economic security of the region being studied.

The building industry in China is energy-intensive, and promoting energy efficiency improvements and energy savings in this sector is of vital significance for its sustainable development. Using a proposed meta-frontier DEA approach, this paper investigates the key factors responsible for changes in the economy-wide energy efficiency and the sources of both energy inefficiency and energy-savings potential in China’s regional building industry for the 2000–2014 period by considering three aspects: the technology gap, scale efficiency, and pure technical efficiency. The results show that (1) during the sample period, the energy efficiency in China’s building industry increased significantly. Technological progress and improvements in pure technical efficiency were the two main contributors. (2) Energy inefficiency in China’s building industry was measured at 0.5836, indicating that more than half of the current total energy consumption in this sector was wasteful. The regional technology gap and pure technical inefficiency were the two main sources of energy inefficiency. (3) Energy inefficiency and the energy-savings potential in China’s building industry showed distinct spatial characteristics, indicating that the focus of future work should vary by province.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the status and progress of rural household energy sustainable development in China. A new composite indicator, rural energy sustainable development index (RESDI), is developed based on the improved grouped principal component analysis method (GPCA) which is the combination utilization of principal component analysis (PCA), factor analysis (FA), and entropy weight method. The improved grouped principal component analysis method keeps the advantages of principal component analysis and factor analysis. To capture the characters of rural energy sustainable development, ten indicators selected based on the criteria presented by OECD are designed to construct the RESDI. The main results are as follows. The RESDI increased from 0.185 in 1991 to 3.189 in 2012. However, the curve of RESDI can be divided into three phases: a slow increase stage between 1991 and 1996, a rapid decrease stage from 1997 to 1998, and a rapid increase stage between 1999 and 2012.

The objective of this paper is to introduce geothermal energy resources, utilization, development roadmap, and government support in China. Over the last 20 years, China was the first place in the world in direct utilization of geothermal energy with total amount reaching 17,870 MWt in 2014, and with an increasing trend annually. Compared with the rapid increase of direct utilization, the development of geothermal power generation in China is not obvious in the past 40 years, with an installed capacity of 27.78 MWe, ranking 18th in the world at present. It is reported that geothermal heating area was up to 396 million square meters with an installed capacity of 1178 MWt in 2013. Research on HDR (hot dry rock) resources is in its infancy. Considering the recoverable coefficient of 2%, energy stored in HDR at a depth of 3.0–10.0 km is 4500 times the total energy consumption in China in 2013. In order to achieve sustainable development of geothermal energy in China, attention should be paid to the following aspects in the future: technology development of EGS (enhanced geothermal system), low cost and scale-up of geothermal power generation, cascade utilization in geothermal heating, and sustainable exploitation and utilization of geothermal reservoirs.

The coordinated actions of the central and the provincial governments are important in improving China's energy efficiency. This paper uses a three-dimensional decomposition model to measure the contribution of each province in improving the country's energy efficiency and a small-sample hybrid model to forecast this contribution. Empirical analysis draws the following conclusions which are useful for the central government to adjust its provincial energy-related policies. (a) There are two important areas for the Chinese government to improve its energy efficiency: adjusting the provincial economic structure and controlling the number of the small-scale private industrial enterprises; (b) Except for a few outliers, the energy efficiency growth rates of the northern provinces are higher than those of the southern provinces; provinces with high growth rates tend to converge geographically; (c) With regard to the energy sustainable development level, Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangxi, and Shaanxi are the best performers and Heilongjiang, Shanxi, Shanghai, and Guizhou are the worst performers; (d) By 2020, China's energy efficiency may reach 24.75 thousand yuan per ton of standard coal; as well as (e) Three development scenarios are designed to forecast China's energy consumption in 2012–2020.