Evaluation and Analysis of Synergy between Energy and Environmental Policies in Coal Resource-Rich Areas

The policy synergy of coal resource-rich areas directly affects the process of regional green transformation and high-quality development. Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia are important coal energy bases, and studying the energy and environmental policies of these three provinces is of great significance to sustainable development. Using social network analysis, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model and textual similarity methods, we conducted a synergistic study of policy issuance subjects and policy text contents of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia from both horizontal and vertical perspectives. The results show that: (1) in the policy subject dimension, Shanxi had the highest degree of synergy, but overall the synergy in all three provinces was insufficient, and the number of multi-subject joint texts was relatively small; (2) in the policy content dimension, the textual similarity and goal consistency between Inner Mongolia and the Central Government were better than that of Shaanxi and Shanxi. Therefore, the region of “Shanxi–Shaanxi–Inner Mongolia” should improve the synergistic ability of policy issuance subjects; it should also pay attention to the linkage and refinement of the policy content, and make flexible innovations based on the compatibility with the Central policy incentives, to better promote the low-carbon and green transformation of coal resource-rich areas.