Eco-efficiency Methods For Circular Economy Planning And Their Demonstration

As developing circular economy has been a popular trend in international communities and it is advocated widely in our country, the number of the regions of making circular economy planning is growing rapidly in China. Aiming at providing a scientific and practical tool for studying circular economy planning in China, this study uses a methodology that introduces the theory of eco-efficiency at first and then to construct a group of methods which have ever been used in other research areas respectively based on the theory of eco-efficiency for studying circular economy planning with a case study of Shanghai.Firstly, a set of eco-efficiency indicators suitable for measuring circular economy development in China is set up after the proposition that eco-efficiency is an appropriate measurement for circular economy has been testified and the latest researches at home and abroad of eco-efficiency indicators at macro level have been investigated. The set of eco-efficiency indicators is composed of 7 ones including DMI productivity, energy productivity, water productivity, built-up land productivity, productivity of solid waste discharged, productivity of waste gas emission and productivity of waste water emission. These indicators are originated from an indicator of economic product of GDP, 4 indicators of resource demands including DMI, energy consumption, water consumption, built-up land, and 3 indicators of emissions including volume of solid waste discharged, volume of waste gas emission and volume of waste water emission.Next, under the guideline of the set of eco-efficiency indicators for measuring circular economy development in China, 4 prominent methods comprising of material flow analysis, scenario analysis, complete decomposition model and policy matrix are introduced to 4 main research fields correspondingly of circular economy planning including problem, target, (project) area and policy, producing a group of methods for studying circular economy planning. The group is dominated by quantitative methods with some qualitative ones, available for all the 4 main research areas.Finally, the group of methods based on eco-efficiency are applied in the 4 mainresearch fields of Shanghai's circular economy planning and a series of significant results are obtained. Here are some of the conclusions. (1) Presently, although Shanghai is the most developed city and the earliest area to develop circular economy in China, the level of its circular economy is relatively low as a whole because its eco-efficiency indicators are largely lower than the developed countries and even most of them are still lower than the top level in China. In the next 15 years Shanghai's economy growth will face the high pressure from resource demands and environmental pollution, as there is only a strong delinking which has so far not been stable between volume of waste water emission and GDP and others are all weak delinkings between DMI and GDP, energy consumption and GDP, built-up land and GDP, volume of water consumption and GDP, volume of solid waste discharged and GDP, and volume of waste gas emission and GDP. (2) In the short term the preference area in term of energy consumption in Shanghai should be to lower the proportion of the second industry, which is different from that of the whole country which should be to reduce the intensity of energy of the second industry. (3) The status quo of polices in term of circular economy in Shanghai are dominated by restricted policies while market policies and participating policies are comparatively scarce.Some of deficiencies exist unavoidably in this study. For instance, the sensitivity and accuracy of the eco-efficiency indicators designed on the basis of existing data are not ideal enough due to the scarcity of relevant data.