ABSTRACT
Energy is an important material impetus for
urbanization, while
urbanization is also key factors that stimulate the energy consumption
increase. The rapid development of China’s urbanization in recent years has led
to changes in the total energy consumption and structure, which will inevitably
affect the realization of China’s rapid and sustainable economic development
goals. Therefore, this article was based on panel data from 2005 to 2016 of 30
provinces in China, used energy consumption as the explained variable, the
urbanization rate as the core variable, GDP per capita as threshold variables, and selected GDP per capita,
industrialization level, urban per capita disposable income, the density of
urban population, the proportion of the tertiary industry as control variables.
Meanwhile, the
threshold model was used to study the threshold effect. We put focus on the
nonlinear relationship between urbanization and energy consumption and the
corresponding regional differences and hope to make reasonable suggestions for
optimizing the industrial structure and finally realizing the coordinated
development of urbanization and energy consumption in China. The results show
that in the accelerated stage of economic development, the main impact of
urbanization is to accelerate the increase of energy consumption. When the
level of economic development enters the post-industrialization stage, the
stimulation of urbanization on energy consumption becomes smaller, which means
that the urbanization transformation will face great pressure on energy
consumption. Therefore, this paper considered China in three areas, eastern,
middle and western areas to transversely compare and analyze, and put forward
three rationalization proposals: To speed up the marketization of construction,
promote economic development of the western and middle region, and narrow the
gap of urbanization development of areas; to coordinate urbanization
development and energy consumption in the eastern and western regions,
accelerate industrial restructure in the middle and western regions, and
promote sound and rapid urbanization; to grasp the law of urbanization’s effect
on energy consumption and control the trend of energy consumption.