| A great challenge facing the world today is the contradiction between the economic development and energy consumption. On the one hand, the energy consumption is an important driver of the economic growth; on the other hand, the over-consumption of energy resources will cause the shortage of energy, environmental pollution, ecological damage and other problems. With a large population and rapid economic development in recent years, the gap between energy supply and demand is becoming the bottleneck of restricting economic growth, while environmental pollution caused by the large consumption of fossil fuels will become even more severe, which will create huge pressure on energy saving to China. Without a proper solution to the problem of energy consumption, energy safety can not be guaranteed, the current economic growth rate is unsustainable, and people’s health and quality of life will also be affected. A fundamental solution is to change economy grows means. In this context, the state proposed to further develop strategic emerging industries, in order to promote the industrial restructuring and upgrading through scientific and technological progress and innovation. The strategic emerging industries has the nature of "intellect-technology-intensive, low consumption of material resources, high growth potential and more comprehensive benefits", and also have led and driven influence on other industries. Through the development of strategic emerging industries, the entire economy should gradually achieve the aim of "lower input, higher output" and "less emissions, more usage". Then how does the development of strategic emerging industries affect China’s energy consumption? Can strategic emerging industries’development actually improve the energy efficiency and optimize the energy structure? These are the issues that will be discussed in this paper.First of all, this paper analyses the mechanism of how strategic emerging industries cause the changes of energy efficiency and consumption structure. With the characteristics of high-technology and high relevance to other industries, strategic emerging industries can guild the direction of the development of future industries. In this perspective, the development of strategic emerging industries will not only promote technology of other industries, which results in overall progress of technology, but also promote industrial upgrading and transformation, thus change the industrial structure. In the previous domestic and international studies, most scholars agreed that the changes of industrial structure and technical progress are the main factors which can change the energy structure and efficiency. Based on the previous relevant literatures, this paper first analyses the mechanism of how the strategic emerging industries affect the energy structure and efficiency by changing the industrial structure from the perspective of the industrial revolution and the "structural bonus". Then by considering energy as a factor of production and taking it into the production function model, it shows that technical progress which caused by strategic emerging industries will improve energy efficiency. This paper specifically analyses the mechanism of how technical progress is to improve the energy efficiency and structure by factors substitution and externality. In addition, with the development of the emerging industries, institutional changes in micro and macro sense take place, such as those in corporate management, science and technology system, market-oriented reform and so on. According to the previous studies, institutional factors also play an important role in the change of energy consumption. Based on the logic that strategic emerging industries promote institutional innovation, and institutional innovation then affect the energy consumption, we describe the path that how strategic emerging industries promote institutional innovation in market-oriented reform and adjust the system of science and technology, and thus change the energy consumption.After the illustration of the response mechanism of strategic emerging industries on energy consumption, this paper separately takes the empirical tests of the impact on energy efficiency and structure of the strategic emerging industries. In the analysis of impact on energy efficiency, we calculated the China’s provincial energy efficiency from2000to2010. Then the traditional indicators and strategic emerging industries related indicators are also taken into the Tobit model for the regression analysis. Besides the full sample regression, the grouping regression are also performed according to the regional differences of economic development level, energy resources and climate resources abundance, in order to study the different influences of the strategic emerging industries on the energy efficiency. With Bootstrap tests, we examine whether the differences of coefficients are statistically significant. In the analysis of the impact on energy structure caused by strategic emerging industries, we first use the PVAR and PECM Models to investigate the relationships between strategic emerging industries, energy consumption structure and industrial structure in short-term and long-term. Then we use the threshold model to test the threshold effect of different output on energy structure, when the output, R&D investment and amount of labor of strategic emerging industries are different. After that, the threshold effect of industry structure and technical progress on energy structure was also tested, when the output of strategic emerging industries is different. Through theoretical analysis and empirical analysis, this paper draws some conclusions. In terms of energy efficiency, we found firstly that, the growth of the main input and output indicators of strategic emerging industries improve the nationwide energy efficiency significantly. With characteristics of lower energy consumption and higher output, strategic emerging industries are consistent with the idea of sustainable development and low-carbon, thus can guild the direction of the industrial development, which meets the expectations of the government. Meanwhile, the rising in the proportion of secondary industry and the improvement of technology have negative impacts on energy efficiency; institutional factors such as the increase in foreign direct investment and energy prices has a positive but not significant impact on the energy efficiency. Secondly, in the regional perspective, industrial structure, technical and institutional factors, as well as the development of strategic emerging industries have influences on the energy efficiency in different ways, which result from the regional differences in economic development, energy resources and climate resources. Specifically, the growth of output of strategic emerging industries will improve energy efficiency in economically developed eastern provinces, but it will be the opposite case in the Middle and Western area. In the energy resource-poor areas, the increase of investment in strategic emerging industries will improve energy efficiency more significantly. In the climate resource-poor provinces, increasing investment in R&D of strategic emerging industries will improve energy efficiency. In the climate resource-rich provinces, energy efficiency will be improved when the labor and output of strategic emerging industries increase.The conclusions in terms of the energy structure are as below:firstly, the growth of strategic emerging industries is the cause of larger proportion of none fossil energy, there is a positive impact of the former on the latter, and vice versa. The influence of the development the strategic emerging industries and optimization of energy structure is bidirectional, and there is a cause and effect relationship between them. In addition, the increase of strategic emerging industries will weak the proportion energy-intensive industries in the whole industry’s development, which means that the development of strategic emerging industries will reduce the expansion of high energy-consuming industries. Secondly, there is a co-integration relationship between the strategic emerging industries, the proportion of clean energy in energy consumption and the high energy-consuming industries, in other words, these three variables will maintain in long term equilibrium. Thirdly, the output, R&D investment and the amount of labor of strategic emerging industries have threshold effects on the improvement of energy structure, these variables will play a positive role in improving energy structure, only when reaching a certain threshold; meanwhile, when the output of strategic emerging industries reaches a certain threshold value, the reduction of high energy-consuming industries will help to improve energy structure.The conclusions above have some policy implications:firstly, the government should promote research, innovation, and technical progress, especially the transformation and application of scientific and technical achievements. Secondly, make further efforts on the adjustment of the industrial structure, especially heighten the industry value chain, while control the growth of energy-intensive industries. Thirdly, in making policies of energy and development of strategic emerging industries, the government needs to suit its measures to local conditions and act according to circumstances. Fourthly, make efforts on creating employment opportunities and attracting highly qualified labor forces into strategic emerging industries. Fifthly, promote industry internationalization, encourage foreign investment into strategic emerging industries, and integrate into the international industrial chain actively.The possible contribution of this paper is as follows:firstly, a new perspective to the impact of energy efficiency and structural factors were introduced with some of strategic emerging industries related variables. Secondly, in the examination of the impact of strategic emerging industries on energy efficiency, the group analysis was made based on two dimensions-the abundance of energy resources and climate resources. Thirdly, in the empirical texts part, this paper apply the PVAR model, the PECM model and the Panel threshold model to China’s provincial panel data from2000-2011, which provides the impact law of the development of strategy emerging industries on energy efficiency and energy structure.
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