Analyzing the impact of urbanization on energy consumption in Jiangsu Province

Jiangsu is one of the most developed regions in China. Its’ urbanization rate increased to 61.9 % in 2011, faster than the whole country level (51.27 %). Exploring the influence of urbanization on energy consumption in Jiangsu may help find the relationship between energy consumption and urbanization. The main results received in this paper are as follows. (1) Urbanization accelerated the produce energy consumption over the study period. The produce energy consumption jumped from 50.7 Mtce in 1995 to 166.6 Mtce in 2011. (2) Due to the rapid urbanization, the gap between residential energy consumption for urban and rural regions gradually has become wide since 2002. However, the gap in residential energy consumption per capita between urban and rural has changed narrow since 1995. (3) The grey relational degree between urbanization and office energy consumption is the biggest. However, the relational grade for construction energy consumption is relatively low. (4) The energy intensity effect plays an important role in decreasing produce energy consumption at the aggregate level, followed by the economic structure effect. The economic activity density effect, urbanization rate effect and population effect are found to be primarily responsible for driving produce energy consumption growth over the study period. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015