Roadmap to achieve sustainable energy development: Is energy security important to the path to SDG7: Affordable and Clean Energy -Sustainable Development Goals?

Upon the profound changes in the global energy landscape, renewable energy has provided a new solution to China's energy security problems. To accurately evaluate the importance of renewable energy use for energy security and sustainability, this study innovatively constructed a two-stage framework (Meta Window Parallel Entropy Dynamic DDF model) based on panel data from 30 provinces in China over 2015 to 2021. The framework initially evaluates the energy security index of 30 provinces from the four dimensions of Availability, Accessibility, Affordability and Acceptability. Renewable energy indicators were incorporated to evaluate China's energy sustainable development capacity in the stage of sustainable energy development (Energy S-SDG Stage). In addition, the study introduces the Geodetector model and multiple linear regression model to analyse the driving factors affecting China's energy security and sustainability and their interactions. The findings reveal that Chinese provinces have significant differences in the traditional energy security dimension. The overall energy security level has been low but roughly positive. After considering the renewable energy indicators in the Energy S-SDG stage, the provincial energy security-sustainable development indices are relatively high. Moreover, multidimensional factors synergistic influence China's energy security and the interactions between the factors show an apparent enhancement relationship. These findings highlight the role of renewable energy in improving energy security and achieving the SDGs.