Research On Energy Conservation And Emission Reduction Of China's Cement Industry

Cement is one of the most important building materials.China's economy has grown rapidly since the reform and opening up,and cement industry is one of the most important sectors of China's national economy.While the economy continues to grow healthily,and the national economy rises steadily,the cement industry plays an increasingly important role.Also,while recognizing the great role of cement industry in promoting national economy growth,the negative impact of cement industry on energy and environment should not be ignored.Economic development and social progress put forward higher requirements for the healthy development of cement industry.Due to limitations of the current production technologies,producing cement has brought high energy consumption and high polluting emissions simultaneously.Therefore,energy conservation and emissions reduction have become the most vital issues of China's cement industry.However,studies on the related issues of energy or carbon dioxide emissions of China's cement industry are still insufficient,especially lack of systematic and full-cycle researches.Based on economics models and empirical researches,this paper discusses these problems from the following aspects:energy conservation potential,energy efficiency,rebound effect,substitution effect and factor decomposition of carbon dioxide and.The results and conclusions of this paper would offer certain suggestions for the policy makers,related government departments and industrial participants.This paper analyzes the energy demand of China's cement industry.The results show that under the highly energy conservative limitations,the energy demand in China's cement industry in 2020 and 2030 will be 380.74 and 610.04 million tons of standard coal,respectively.These two figures are 98.89 and 519.16 million tons of standard coal lower than in the nominal scenario,respectively,which had achieved the energy conservation by 20.62%and 45.98%.Beyond the above analysis,the factor decomposition study of carbon dioxide emission by LMDI method showed that during the period of 1991-2014,labor productivity was the major driving force of increasing CO2 emission in China's cement industry,and energy intensity was the major contributor in CO2 emission reduction.In the study of rebound effect,a production function with labor,capital and energy inputs had been created and adopted to calculate the technological productivity to estimate the rebound effect.The result of rebound effect study has presented that the average rate of rebound effect of China's cement industry is 97.1%,and this indicates that the technological progress will have certain effects on the improvement of energy efficiency,but the conservation will face a significant degree of rebound in this industry.In addition,the paper investigates the substitution relationship of each input factor in cement industry.The results show that there is a high elasticity of substitution between energy and labor and capital.Therefore,to focusing on other factors of production to replace the energy should be effective in future.Next generation of cement productions could use more clean energy with lower carbon emissions.And a greener developing path is applicable and essential to China's cement industry.