Study On The Relations Between Energy Consumption, Carbon Emissions And Economic Growth Of Chongqing

The global economy is greatly changed by the climate and economic crises. In this new situation, the economic growth pattern at the price of"high energy consumption, high pollution and high emissions"is facing the transformation pressures from inside and outside. In the beginning of"The 11th Five", the Chinese government has stated clearly"energy intensity"target that at the end of"The 11th Five"each unit of GDP's energy consumption should be lower than that of 2005; at the end of"The 11th Five", the Chinese government announced a clear target of greenhouse gas-controlled that by 2020 the carbon dioxide emissions of per unit of GDP should be reduced 40%--50% based on the volume of 2005. Changing the aim from controlling the energy intensity to controlling the carbon emission is the qualitative change in energy saving and emissions reduction policy of China. Reducing carbon emission intensity should not only improve the energy efficiency but also change the structure of coal-based energy consumption and develop clean energy and related technology, which will have a significant impact on China's economic growth pattern. Based on those mentioned before, this paper analyses the relationship between energy consumption, carbon emission and economic growth of Chongqing in order to provide basis for Chongqing's energy saving and emission reduction policy.Firstly, this paper analyses the current situation of energy consumption, carbon emission and economic growth of Chongqing based on the classifications of sustainable development,"3E"system and some relevant theories. Then this paper analyses the long-term and short-term relationship between energy consumption, carbon emission and economic growth using co-integration analysis and error correction model. The result shows that there is a stable co-integration relation among the three variables. The economic growth has steady negative correlation with the carbon emission but positive correlation with the energy consumption. The coefficient of the error correction term is -0.107, coincidence with the reverse-correction mechanism, which means that the short-time fluctuation moves to long-term equilibrium at the rate of -0.107, a further evidence of the reliability of the long-term equilibrium relationship among the three variables. From the long run, every one point increasing of the carbon emission will cause 4.27 percentage point decreasing of the economic growth and every one point increasing of the energy consumption will result to 3.37 percentage point rising of GDP. The Granger Causality test shows that on the premise of second-order lag, the energy consumption and carbon emission are the one-way Granger reason of GDP. Furth more, the paper respectively tests the Environmental Kuznets Curve and the Energy Kuznets Curve empirically using OLS. The result shows that Chongqing's Environmental Kuznets Curve and Energy Kuznets Curve which are like inverted"U"shape are tenable. But it takes 65 years to reach the inflection point for the carbon emission and 71 years for the energy consumption, according to annual per capita GDP growing at the rate of 10% , taking 2008 as the base year. At last, based on Chongqing's Environmental Kuznets Curve and Energy Kuznets Curve, this paper explores the factors influenced the carbon emission and energy consumption respectively using the T-Grey and LMD methods, in order to bring forward the inflection point of the energy consumption and carbon emission.Combining the above researches, this paper achieves important revelations as follow: (1) When Chongqing puts the energy saving and emission reduction policy into practice the controlling target of the energy consumption cannot be too high because excessive reduction of energy consumption will threaten Chongqing's economic growth; (2) Chongqing should put more efforts on reducing the carbon emission and at the same time to promote the economic transition. (3)Although it will take a long time to reach the inflection point of Environmental and Energy Kuznets Curve based on the existing pattern of economic growth and policy of energy conservation, the existence of the turning point provides intrinsically motivation for Chongqing's emission reduction policies.