Research On Calculation And Impact Factors Of Embodied Energy In China Import And Export Trade

In recent years, with the rapid growth of foreign trade in China, the energy consumption is increasing and the contradiction between energy supply and demand is becoming prominent increasingly. China’s energy demand and environmental problems become a global concern,especially the developed countries who are worried about their own development is threatened, and put forward the "China threat" energy, putting forward the "China energy threat" and accusing China depends on the consumption of the world’s energy resources to promote its own economic growth, which puts pressure on China’s energy issues. About the research of energy consumption, many scholars are based on the production side. They only calculate the energy consumption in the domestic production from the angle of the producers, but ignore the importers indirectly consume the energy of imported products in the process of production when they consume the imported products. As the world’s first cargo trade country, Chinese energy consumption in the process of social and economic development is exported in the form of export, forming the international transfer of energy consumption. Chinese energy consumption is exported in the form of products exported. Therefore, the embodied energy research based on the consumer side can reflect the nature of China’s energy consumption more objectively.First of all, this paper applies input-output analysis method to calculate the embodied energy of China’s import and export during from 1995 to 2012. The results show that amount of China’s embodied energy in import and export are both increasing, with the embodied energy in export increasing from 267.7731 million tons in 1995 to 95606.58 million tons in 2012 and embodied energy in export increasing from 7559.39 million tons to 36923.38 million tons. So the amount of the embodied energy in China’s export trade is much higher than it in import trade,which indicates that the embodied energy in China’s foreign trade is in a net exporter state for a long time.And then, based on the calculation of the embodied energy in the trade, this paper use the method of LMDI I and divides the factors into scale effect, structure effect and intensity effect to analyze the factors of embodied energy in international trade. The result shows that: the scale effect is the decisive factor causing the increase of embodied energy in China’s imports and exports. As the expanding of China’s trade scale, the amount of embodied energy is also growing. The intensity effect inhibits the increase of embodied energy, but it is not enough to offset the impact of the scale effect. In addition, the structural effect has both positive effects and negative impacts on the changes of the embodied energy.Finally, based on the above research, this paper proposes the relevant recommendations, such as improving the efficiency of energy use, adjusting the product structure of the import and export, perfecting the access system of the foreign investment, insisting on the "Going Out" strategy, etc., to reduce domestic energy consumption and realize the sustainable development of economy.