Estimating China’s Energy and Environmental Productivity Efficiency: A Parametric Hyperbolic Distance Function Approach

Since the beginning of this century, China’s annual GDP growth is over 9%. This growth is fueled by large increases in energy consumption, led by a coal-dominated energy structure, and associated with higher sulfur dioxide emissions and industry dust. In 2008, China accounted for over 17% of the world’s total primary energy consumption and accounts for nearly three-quarters of global energy growth. At an average annual energy growth rate over 12% since 2000, China’s future share of primary energy consumption will continue to increase. A consequence of this growth is China becoming the global leader in sulfur and carbon dioxide emissions. To deal with these energy and environmental challenges, the government set energy saving and pollution reduction target objectives in the 11th Five Year Plan (2006-2010): relative to 2005 by 2010, saving national energy use per unit of GDP by 20% and reducing the country’s primary pollution emissions by 10%. These targets were then disaggregated into energy saving targets for each province. With this disaggregated scheme, similar to country’s target, 20 provinces were assigned a 20% energy saving target, seven provinces were assigned targets below 20%, varying from 12% to 17%, and four provinces were given targets above 20%. These allocation were generally not guided by technical or economic efficiency, and thus may not be optimal from the perspectives of equity and efficiency. Historically less energy efficiency provinces may have more potential to reduce their energy consumption and pollution emissions, while higher efficiency provinces may have less potential. The major objective is to determine the optimal targets for each province required to comply with the national Five Year Plan target. A comparison of the estimated optimal with the current government targets will then reveal the value of incorporating economic theory into the decision calculation of setting disaggregate targets. Determining optimal targets requires consideration of both desirable and undesirable comes from alternative feasible targets. An objective is then to delineate these comes as criterion for selection. The procedure employed is a parametric hyperbolic distance function approach with a translog specification. This procedure provides the flexibility of using energy, labor, and capital stock as inputs to produce the desirable output (GDP) and the undesirable output (sulfur dioxide emissions). The procedure will address the objectives by simultaneously estimating both the desirable and undesirable comes. Specifically, the production frontier and environmental productivity efficiency are estimated for each province. The hyperbolic distance function enables the estimation of efficiency scores by incorporating all types of inputs and outputs, and only requires information on input and outputs quantities but not on prices, making it possible to model the emissions in the production process, given nonmarket characteristics of emissions. Based on these parametric estimations, the optimal targets are determined. The trajectory of obtaining these optimal targets for each province is determined by estimating how each province can improve its productive performance through increasing its desirable output and reducing its undesirable output, while simultaneously saving energy inputs. The results provide an empirical measurement of energy efficiency with maximum potential of energy saving for each province at a given technology considering the diverse economic, industry, and energy consumption patterns in the provinces. With a panel data of 29 provinces in China from 2000-2007, the hyperbolic distance function allows us to measure environmental productivity change over time, and then decompose this environmental productivity change into efficiency change, which is the movement toward the frontier, and technical change, which is the shift of the frontier. These further analyses help us identify potential different contributions of productivity growth for each province in China, and examine how the energy saving program will affect the environmental productivity growth for each province.environmental productivity efficiency, hyperbolic distance function, China's energy policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Productivity Analysis, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Ecological Civilization Construction is the Fundamental Way to Develop Low-carbon Economy

AbstractThis article gives a brief account of the meaning, characteristics and origin of ecological civilization, an analysis of the positive impacts of ecological civilization construction on low-carbon economy, and proposes specific recommendations for constructing ecological civilization to develop low-carbon economy in China: compile “Planning Outline” and “Implementation Plan”, increase the publicity of education on ecological civilization concept, strengthen discussion on ecological civilization problems, establish government-enterprise cooperative platform, supporting systems of green technology and financial services to support ecological civilization construction, incorporate ecological civilization indicator into the performance evaluation of government departments, strengthen ecological civilization legislation.© 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of RIUD

Seriality of semantic and phonological processes during overt speech in Mandarin as revealed by event-related brain potentials

How is information transmitted across semantic and phonological levels in spoken word production? Recent evidence from speakers of Western languages such as English and Dutch suggests non-discrete transmission, but it is not clear whether this view can be generalized to other languages such as Mandarin, given potential differences in phonological encoding across languages. The present study used Mandarin speakers and combined a behavioral picture-word interference task with event-related potentials. The design factorially crossed semantic and phonological relatedness. Results showed semantic and phonological effects both in behavioral and electrophysiological measurements, with statistical additivity in latencies, and discrete time signatures (250-450 ms and 450-600 ms after picture onset for the semantic and phonological condition, respectively). Overall, results suggest that in Mandarin spoken production, information is transmitted from semantic to phonological levels in a sequential fashion. Hence, temporal signatures associated with spoken word production might differ depending on target language. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

An Experimental Study on Effect of Steel Corrosion on the Bond–Slip Performance of Reinforced Concrete

This paper studied the effects of reinforcement corrosion on bond performance between rebar and concrete. Tests were carried out to evaluate the degradation of bond between reinforcing steel and concrete for different corrosion levels of reinforcing steel. A series of 20 specimens of different concrete strength with various reinforcing steel corrosion levels were designed and manufactured. Each specimen was casted as a 200-mm concrete cube, and a steel rebar was centrally embedded with two stirrups around it. The steel rebar were corroded using an electrochemical accelerated corrosion technique. The corrosion crack opening width and length were recorded after the corrosion process. Then, monolithic pull-out loading tests were carried out on the specimens. The effects of reinforcement corrosion on crack opening, maximum bond stress, and energy dissipation were discussed in detail. It was found that reinforcement corrosion has non-negligible effects on bond performance of reinforcing bar in concrete

Dynamics and Patterns of a Diffusive Prey-Predator System with a Group Defense for Prey

We study a diffusive prey-predator system with a group defense for prey. Under Neumann boundary condition, we analyze local and stability of nonnegative constant steady states and the existence and nonexistence of nonconstant steady states. These results also exhibit the critical role of the system parameters leading to the formation of spatiotemporal patterns

Japanese Encephalitis Accompanied by Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis: a Case Report

Background: Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) is a relatively rare cerebrovascular condition which accounts for 0.5% of all strokes. Risk of CVST has been documented in patients with numerous conditions including central nervous system infections, however, Japanese encephalitis (JE, epidemic encephalitis type B) with CVST has not been reported previously. Case Presentation: Here, we present a case of JE with CVST in a 17-year-old man. On admission, the patient was initially diagnosed as intracranial infection, and soon after, brain magnetic resonance (MR) imaging (MRI) and MR Venography (MRV) confirmed the diagnosis of CVST. Moreover, the blood JE-specific IgM antibody which proved weakly positive at first, turned positive one week later. Consequently, our patient was diagnosed as CVST accompanied by JE. Anticoagulant and anti-infective therapy were initiated, which eventually lead to gradual recovery of the patient. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first case report of CVST associated with JE. MRI and MRV represent a prime method for the diagnosis of CVST, while the positivity of JE virus IgM antibody, especially increased antibody levels within a short period, is of great significance to diagnose JE. The early diagnosis and timely treatment of this potentially lethal condition would improve its prognosis significantly