Estimation And Analysis Of China's Export Trade Embodied Energy

It is an academic topic whether the external trade, which has greatly contributed to the steady economic growth of China, is a main factor to drive the growth of national energy consumption and environmental pollution in the last three decays. This paper is focused on the identification of the influence of commodity export from China to the national energy consumption.At first, based on an EC-VAR model that the aggregate energy consumption is regressed to the external trade and internal absorptions with annual data sampled in 1978 to 2008, the effects of external trade to the national aggregate energy consumption is investigated, showing that the energy consumption elasticity to export and internal absorption is 0.32 and 0.5, respectively. By the model specification in E-G cointegration test, Granger causality relationship examination and Johansen technique, it is indicated that the export trade is respectively cointegrated to energy consumption and internal absorption, while the cointegration of energy consumption and internal absorption is not significant, implying that export trade caused the rapid growth of national energy consumption directly, while the internal absorption indirectly affected the energy consumption in the last 31 years.Secondly, intensities of embodied energy for 42 departments coordinated to national input-output table 2007 is estimated based on the life-cycle energy consumption of commodities in the process of their production. The weighted average intensity of embodied energy for total output is 13.4tce per thousand RMB, to which the weighted average intensity for energy sectors is several times.Finally, each department of energy intensity embodied in the export was obtained by export data in 2007 and 2008 which were merger to input-output table of 42 departments, multiplied by energy intensity of relevant departments. The conclusion through the input and output analysis are as follows.First, every year More than a third of the energy of our country is consumed by foreign in the form of embodied energy in export. Second, energy intensity of every department is high. There are eight departments'energy intensity reached 1.5 tce/104yuan (more than the average energy intensity) in addition to five energy departments. Third, exports of products of high pollution and high energy consumption and low value-added have been topped, which increases embodied energy in exports. Fourth, export services of some energy departments are large, their energy consumption per output is not high, but they are our main export industry embodied energy.The following policy recommendations are proposed according to the conclusion of energy consumption of China's export trade:changing energy consumption structure; adjusting industrial structure; technological innovation, developing new energy sources; and putting saving resources as China's basic national policy and building a resource-saving and environment-friendly country.