Evaluation and Analysis of Synergy between Energy and Environmental Policies in Coal Resource-Rich Areas
4.2.1. Extracting Topic Words Based on LDA Modeling
Policy topic richness (i.e., the optimal number of topics) is related to comprehensiveness and is the basis for policy synergy [48]. Through the theme consistency test, the optimal number of topics for the Central, Shaanxi, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia areas are initially determined to be 5, 5, 8 and 6, respectively. To observe the relationship between topics from the clustering effect and draw the LDAvis image, the distance between the bubbles indicates the degree of association between the topics, and the overlapping part of the bubbles indicates that there are cross-featured words in the two topics [49].
As shown in Figure 7, the distance between the Central topics is clear; the five policy topics are oriented and independent, indicating that the topic identification is better and there is a certain degree of difference between the topics. The topics of Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia partially overlap, and the overlap of Shanxi Topic 1, Topic 3, Topic 6, and Topic 7 is high and less clear. Therefore, this paper integrates Shanxi T1, T3, T6, and T7 into one topic term, and finally determines that the optimal number of topics for the Center, Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Inner Mongolia are 5, 5, 5, and 6, respectively.
The 20 feature words with the highest probability were extracted from each topic, and the feature words were labeled and named to form the topic set of energy and environment policies, as shown in Table 5. It can be seen that there is no obvious relationship between the number of optimal topics and the number of policy texts. The Central Government and the “Shanxi–Shaanxi–Inner Mongolia” areas should not only pursue the “quantity” of policies, but also pay more attention to the “quality” of policies, to improve the richness of policy topics and realize the comprehensive coverage of energy and environmental issues.
Although the number of topics in the Central is not the largest, the feature words under each topic are richer and cover a more comprehensive domain, which is consistent with the results obtained by Zhou [9], and also proves the accuracy of topic extraction. Feature words include “carbon peak”, “carbon neutrality”, “environmental protection”, “energy-saving technologies”, “ infrastructure construction”, “pollution control”, “digitalization”, etc., closely following the background of the “dual carbon” era, involving industry, agriculture, new energy, construction, transportation, automobiles, and other fields. Emphasis should be placed on the construction of digital intelligence, infrastructure, new energy generation facilities, with an increase of investment in product development and technology research. Furthermore, there should be an effort to build a joint supervision and management system among public institutions, including the People’s Government, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other government departments. In addition, there should be plans to optimize energy structure and environmental management, to build a clean and low-carbon energy system and a beautiful and livable ecological environment.
The energy and environmental policies of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia are distinctive, and all implement and respond to Central Government policies to some extent. And a common topic word, “governmental regulatory subjects”, has emerged, demonstrating that the construction of a core governance and regulatory system based on the leadership of the Party Central Committee and the coordinated responsibility of governmental departments has become the consensus of the three regions.
Shaanxi covers construction, transportation, courier services, automobiles and many other industries, with more emphasis on the use of industrial and project demonstrations to achieve regional governance. However, less attention has been paid to energy utilization, new energy construction and technological innovation. Shanxi involves agriculture, construction, climate, culture, new energy and other fields, focusing on standardization issues such as licensing and emission rights in regulating the development of the industry, and improving the efficiency of energy use and the employment of environment governance in infrastructure construction, institutional systems, pollution monitoring, intelligent construction, and other means. Inner Mongolia focuses on technological innovation, emphasizes the development of new energy storage equipment, and is concerned with dual control of energy consumption and energy efficiency management. However, Inner Mongolia’s policy involves a relatively singular industry, mostly focused on the construction sector.
4.2.2. Policy Textual Similarity Analysis
This paper calculates the textual similarity between the three provinces of “Shanxi–Shaanxi–Inner Mongolia” and the Central policy. As shown in Table 6, the similarity value ranges from 0.75 to 0.85, indicating that the three provinces are in line with the Central Government’s policies and have a high degree of consistency. Among them, Central-Inner Mongolia has the highest textual similarity and the strongest synergy level; Central-Shanxi has the second highest textual similarity; and Central-Shaanxi has a lower textual similarity. In policy practice, there are mainly two types of policy combinations: “policy packaging” and “policy patching”. The former is to apply or replace the original policy as a whole; the latter is to make corresponding modifications and innovations under the overall goal consistency [50].
Through the Central and “Shanxi–Shaanxi–Inner Mongolia” energy and environmental policy fields, objectives, and measures comparison, it was found that Inner Mongolia-involved industry is relatively singular, but it focuses on synergy with the Central energy and environmental policy. They all include the objectives of improving energy utilization efficiency, building new energy generation infrastructure, accelerating technological research and innovation, and developing new energy storage equipment. Moreover, Inner Mongolia tends to apply or replace the Central policy as a whole in the form of “policy packaging”, which lacks flexibility.
Shanxi’s text is characterized by a gradual increase in clean and renewable energy policies in the last three years, and has promulgated the Shanxi Photovoltaic Industry Chain Implementation Program, the Shanxi Wind Power Equipment Industry Chain Implementation Program, and the Notice on Promoting the Three-year Action Plan for Distributed Renewable Energy Development (2023–2025), which vigorously promotes the development of clean and green energy. It has also issued the Measures for the Administration of Sewage Rights Trading, the Shanxi Province’s “14th Five-Year Plan” for the Development of Urban Domestic Sewage Treatment and Resource Utilization and other documents, indicating that Shanxi Province is moving closer to the Central Government’s policy objectives by fully integrating the region’s natural resource advantages and regional development.
Shaanxi’s policies emphasize the prevention and control of regional pollution and the protection of the ecological environment, with documents on environmental governance, the improvement of air quality, the control of greenhouse gases, and the response to climate change accounting for 52.8% of Shaanxi’s total policies. When formulating policies, Shaanxi Province prefers to implement Central policies in the form of “policy patching”, taking into account regional advantages and different characteristics in a more flexible way to improve the pertinence and precision of policies, while the overall goal is the same. Therefore, the textual similarity is relatively low.
