| Since the reform and opening up, China’s economy maintains stable in the process of high speed growth. Meanwhile, in a relatively short period of time, it completed the transformation of industrialization and rapidly accessed to the middle and late stages of the industrial development. But along with the steady improvement in the level of social material and national income and welfare, it shows that our country’s resource consumption is increasing rapidly and the resource bottleneck effects gradually appear. As a big country which is full of resource, the foreign degree of dependency of petroleum products in our country has exceeded50%currently, and China has become a net coal importer since2007. Because the energy consumption increases rapidly, the pressure of energy product safe supply is enhanced, and at the same time, it derives from the increasingly severe carbon emissions and environmental pressure. The sustainable material foundation of Chinese economic growth begins to waver, and the energy factor has been transformed from a highly competitive resource product to the bottleneck element which restricts further development of economy.It is in this background that our country began to make energy saving into the target of macroscopical adjusting control system since2006. In the "Eleventh Five-Year" development compendium, it is specified that the GDP energy consumption falls20%. Basing on the successful implementation of "Eleven Five-Year" energy saving target, the energy-saving work is still vital as focus of macroeconomic regulation and control in "the Twelfth Five Year Plan" period and the consumption will fall16%.But in the short period, the heavy industry development will still be the main feature of our country industrialized process, the investment of governmental dominant mode also exists in the high energy consumption industries, technology innovation ability and factor productivity level are still in a low level, the main structure of energy consumption is still coal consumption which causes low efficiency and high pollution, at the same time, average per capita income breaks through1000dollars which will produce more residential energy consumption demand. The reality features of Chinese economy will undoubtedly make the complement of the energy-saving difficult and complex. How to successfully complete energy saving emission reduction targets and change the grow manner into intensive growth have become the fundamental problem which relates to the maintenance of China’s economic miracle.Firstly, we make use of panel data econometric model to analyze empirically the evolutional mechanism of the energy consumption intensity and study the mechanism of action of various factors, such as the structure, technique, system, price, etc., which have effects on the energy consumption intensity. Then we make an analysis of samples in five different situations, that is, interprovincial, regional, urban economic, and industrial, and characterize the subtle impacts of the regional differences, the industrial differences and differences in models of economic development on the evolutional track of the energy consumption level. At the same time, we cross-prove the mechanism of the energy consumption impacts on the basis of the comparative analysis of various samples.In our study based on the interprovincial samples, technical progress and structural adjustment have significant and positive impacts on the decline of the energy consumption intensity. But the real influencing power varies regularly with diverse sample compositions. Meanwhile, it is further confirmed that the optimization of the energy consumption structure has positive effect on improving the energy efficiency. As the core of conserving energy and reducing emissions, the changes of technology, industrial structure and energy structure dominate the fluctuations in the level of Chinese energy consumption. However, the influencing approaches to the energy consumption intensity, which are caused by factor prices, FDI, the changes of ownership and other factors, reflect the economic environmental differences of regional samples like the level of economic development, the growth of the power source and the basic pattern of industrial compositions.Also, we find the similar changes when the samples are extend to the industry and the trade. That is to say, the substitute impacts among the technology, structure and energy remain relatively stable and continuous, while the impact tracks show diversity and instability associated with the micro influencing variables such as the allocation of elements. For example, though the changes of the price and increased use of electricity do reduce the energy consumption level significantly, the acceleration of capital formation and the capital-intensive trend in the industrial development offset some of this effect. In other words, the complementary relationship between the capital and the labor is confirmed again. Besides, there is a diverse analysis result about the impacts of FDI on the energy consumption intensity as well.Furthermore, we introduce two control variables in the industrial level, the changes of scale level and "resource dividend", to the model and test the impacts of scale changes and trade structure on the energy consumption intensity. Therefore, we do get the expected results:we prove the existence of "resource dividend" in the capital-intensive industry and reinforcement of "resource comparative advantage" does strengthen the dependence of Chinese economy on energy.Generally speaking, we find that technological progress, structural adjustment and optimization of energy consumption structure indeed have stable and consistent influence on the energy consumption intensity, but the impacts of variables like energy prices, FDI, ownership changes and trade structure, etc. are sensitive to the samples. Its real mechanism of action reflects the characteristics of the economic development stages and the diversity of departments’attributes.How did energy constraints and controls decrease the energy consumption and by which political approaches was the decline achieved?At first, we elaborate the formation and decomposition of constraint systems about conserving energy and evaluate them scientifically and practically. The idea of average target decomposition could not indicate the regional characteristics which affect conserving energy significantly and the necessity of regional economic growth and further enlarge the uncertainty and complexity of completing the ultimate goal. However, scientific conserving energy decomposition should advance gradually in the order of "east first, then center and last west".Then we begin with the changes of the related factors during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period and analyze the real changes of the structure, technology, energy consumption structure and production scale, etc.. On the assumption of the causal chain about the evolutional mechanism of energy consumption, we recognize how to choose political approaches to energy-conserving constraints and confirm the necessity and effectiveness of this choice:the controlled approaches on the basis of scale improvement are convenient to operate, to supervise and have the lower controlling costs. Meanwhile, they can weaken the differences between the central and local government’s targets so that the policy orientation and administrative incentive are appeared in which the two of the interest subjects are consistent. As a consequence, the continuous decline of the energy consumption has been achieved during the Plan period.Could the same experience and success continue to be reproduced during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period?From the perspective of long-term effectiveness, we make an analysis of the design ideas of the energy-conserving policies which were formulated during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period, and dissect and set forth the subtle impacts of the promotion of energy conservation and emissions reduction on the structural adjustment. Then we conclude that the controlling system regarding scale integration as the main means will strengthen the dependence of technological capabilities and growth on it, and aggravate the development trend which emphasizes on the industry. Thus we make a judgment and answer to the long-tern effectiveness of present energy-conserving polices. This control thought which tries to avoid structural effects and improve effectiveness directly, an enforcement policy which regards scale control as the main means, neglects the means of market-oriented regulation so that the long-tern effectiveness of current energy-conserving constraints is undermined seriously. And the existence and intensification of deep structural contradictions must be difficult to promote when the scale control reaches to a peak, making the growth and energy conservation become a zero-sum game.In fact, if we continue to advance with the same controlling idea and political approaches during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period, perhaps it would not go on since the effects of scale integration are released quickly in the short term. In other words, as for the characteristics of Chinese economic development, how to explore a political approach to mitigating the pressure from energy and environment on the basis of the guarantee that the economy remains growing rapidly without touching upon deep contradictions is unknown. At least, we don’t the answer at present.It can provide long-term help to set up energy-conserving constraints’system which accords with market principles and decrease Chinese energy consumption intensity during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period and even a longer time that the completeness of energy consumption statistic system is accelerated, energy consumption indicators for monitoring are detailed, the ideas and methods of testing total amount are adjusted, regional energy-conserving targets are decomposed and formulated scientifically and reasonably, differentiated controlling political access is implemented with the regional characteristics, the torsion of the ideas of controlling high energy-consuming industries is speeded up, the institutional environment of which the controlling principle bodies are transferred from horizontal to vertical is created and nurtured and the revolution of pricing ecological and environmental costs is promoted. |
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