The Interactions Between China’s Economic Growth, Energy Production And Consumption And The Related Air Emissions

The growing conflict between economic growth, energy and environment has restrained China’s economic sustainable development. Along with the rapid economic growth, China’s energy production and consumption and the relevant emissions have been rising constantly. It is necessary for the sustainable development of China’s social economy to explore the relationships among economic growth, energy production and consumption and environment. Emergy analysis, based on synthesized system ecology and ecological economics, is a systemic analysis method. It can convert different forms and categories of energy into a same unit standard to overcome the quality barrier of traditional energy measurement, which makes it possible to quantitatively evaluate different eco-economic systems. This research analyzes emissions’impacts of China’s primary energy production and consumption in terms of emergy, and then it establishes an indicator system based on emergy, energy and money to investigate the interactions among economic growth, energy production and consumption and emissions’impact. The proposed method and indicator system were applied to research the interrelations among China’s economic growth, energy production and consumption and air emissions’impact during 2000-2011. The main conclusions are summarized as follows.(1) There is a certain causal relationship between China’s economic growth and energy. They interact each other, i.e. energy drives economic growth and inversely economic growth stimulates energy consumption. Increasing energy demand promotes the expansion of the scale of energy production.(2) Coal, petroleum and natural gas act as major energy source in the structure of China’s energy production and consumption, with over 90% proportion in the primary energy production and consumption. Coal is still the main source of energy production and consumption; the proportions of petroleum production and consumption both decreased to some degree, and its consumption ratio is higher than that of production; the production and consumption proportions of natural gas have sharply increased; non-fossil energy production and consumption ratio have slight increase. China’s energy structure has been improved slightly.(3) China’s energy efficiency has been raised, including energy production efficiency (EPE) and energy consumption efficiency. Therein, electricity generation and power station has increased their heating efficiency.(4) Self-sufficiency rate of energy has declined, especially the SSRE of petroleum and natural.(5) Impact of emission from energy production (IEEP) has increasing contribution to energy-related emission, but impact of emission from energy consumption (IEEC) is still the main contributor. Energy production and consumption related emissions have great impact on human and environment, of which the impact of PM10 on human health is emphasized In addition, emission impact per unit energy production (EIPEP) increased while emission impact per unit energy consumption (EIPEC) decreased.(6) The ratio of impact of emission from coal and natural gas (IEEPcoal and IEEPnatural gas) to total impact of emission rose with fluctuation. Therein, impact of emission from coal production (IEEPcrude Oil) continuously decreased. The ratio of impact of emission from coal and petroleum consumption (IEECcoal and IEECpetroleum) to total impact of emission from energy consumption fluctuated slightly. Therein, the impact of emission from natural gas consumption (IEECnatural gas) increased continuously.(7) The relationship among China’s economy, energy and environment has been improved but the pace still falls behind the economic growth rate.