| Abstract |
In recent years, issues such as climate change and energy shortage have become prominent. Geothermal energy has gradually attracted the attention of the government as a clean energy source, and has received strong policy support. In order to put the exploitation and utilization of China's geothermal resources on the track of healthy and orderly development, in recent years, governments from central to local levels have successively promulgated and revised a series of policies, regulations and technical specifications related to the exploitation and utilization of geothermal energy, which have played a positive role in guiding the exploitation and utilization of geothermal energy in China. Based on a two-dimensional analysis framework built by M.Howlett’s and M.Ramesh’s policy instruments theory and the theory of industry chain, this article used content analysis method to measure and analyze geothermal policies in China. The policy instruments dimension focuses on the degree of government involvement. According to the degree of direct involvement of government power, policy instruments are divided into compulsory instruments (including regulation, public enterprises and direct provision of services), mixed instruments (including taxes and user charges, property auctions, subsidies, information and exhortation) and voluntary instruments (including private markets, voluntary organizations, families and communities). The industry chain dimension focuses on the specific industry activities that the government is involved in. This article divided the geothermal industry chain into two parts, namely the mining link and the application link. Based on panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2010 to 2015, a fixed-effects model was constructed to measure the impact of policy instruments and other control variables on geothermal exploitation. Geothermal policy instruments are divided into regulatory instruments (including regulation, taxes and user charges, property auctions) and incentive instruments (including private markets, subsidies, information and exhortation). Other control variables include provincial GDP, exploitable geothermal resources, coal consumption by region, and PM10. Results show as follows: the characteristic of the usage of the instruments shows that the dominant instrument is compulsory instrument, the supplement one is mixed instrument and the voluntary instrument is inadequate and vulnerable; furthermore, the selection and implementation of specific policy instruments in every link of the industry chains have problems such as deletions. Regulatory instruments have a negative effect on the amount of geothermal exploitation, and the effect is significant. The incentive instruments have a positive effect on the amount of geothermal exploitation, and the effect is significant. GDP and exploitable geothermal resources have a positive effect on geothermal exploitation and the effect is significant, while the coal consumption by region and PM10 effects are not significant. In response to the shortcomings of the selection and application of existing policy instruments, this study proposes: appropriately reduce the frequency of the use of regulation, taxes and user charges, property auctions; enhance the use of subsidies, information and exhortation, and the private market. At the dimension of industry chain, the article proposes: increase the use of voluntary policy instruments in geothermal exploitation; increase the use of mixed policy instruments and voluntary policy tools in geothermal utilization. |