Research on dynamic effect of urbanization on energy consumption-based on analysis of panel data in China

With the continuous development of urbanization in China, the energy consumption problems become more and more outstanding. It is of great significance to deal with the relationship between urbanization and energy consumption for the green and sustainable development of China. The transmission mechanism of the influence of urbanization process on energy consumption is comprehensively analyzed. Based on the dynamic panel data from 1998 to 2021, the extended Kaya model in a vector form and the improved LMDI model with a sum of polynomial multiplication are adopted to study the energy consumption change from three perspectives of industry, space and population. Our results show that the influence of urbanization on energy consumption on the production side is much greater than that on the living side. The change in production energy consumption is 9.47 times that of living energy consumption. The residents’ consumption effect and per capita living effect have the highest positive contributions to the energy consumption fluctuation, which contributed a total of 5.558 billion tce. The technology progress(-37.27%) and population agglomeration(-6.1%) relieve the energy pressure, with a negative contribution to the total energy consumption. The influences of sub-effects on dynamic change of energy consumption are comprehensively analyzed, and the influence mechanisms are further revealed. Under the energy constraint, the energy consumption can be reduced by technology progress and population agglomeration size. However, more importantly, some reasonable suggestions should be performed, such as the improvement of residents’ consumption patterns, the use of green energy, the development of knowledge-intensive industry, and the better planning of space layout. This is the key for a new development model of green and low-carbon urbanization.