Spatiotemporal variations, influencing factors, and configurational promotion paths of energy efficiency in China’s cities

The promotion of energy efficiency (EE) helps address energy constraints and promote environmental sustainability. This study comprehensively explores the spatiotemporal variations, influencing factors, and configuration promotion paths of EE in 284 Chinese cities during 2003‒2019 using the global super-efficiency minimum distance to strong efficient frontier (G-S-MinDS), exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA), multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR), and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) methods. The findings are: ① China’s cities have an annual average EE of 0.658 with a growth rate of 0.53%, showing considerable promotion potential. ② Industrial structure optimization, population agglomeration, economic development, and increased green coverage contribute positively, while government intervention and openness hinder China’s urban EE. ③ Four configurational promotion paths for enhancing China’s urban EE are identified, where among those paths population density is a core condition, while government intervention is not. This study provides valuable insights into substantially improving urban EE, emphasizing the need for targeted policies to address energy and environmental crises in China.