China’s Energy Situation and Its Implications in the New Millennium

Many are interested in China’s energy situation, however, numerous energy related issues in China still remain unanswered. For example, what are the potential forces driving energy demand and supply? Previous reviews focused only on fossil fuel based energy and ignored other important elements including renewable and ‘clean’ energy sources. The work presented here is intended to fill this gap by bringing the research on fossil-based and renewable energy economic studies together and identifying the potential drivers behind both energy demand and supply to provide a complete picture of China’s energy situation in the new millennium. This will be of interest to anyone concerned with the development of China’s economy in general, and in particular with its energy economy.China China; Energy; Fossil fuels; Renewable Energy

Industrial Coal Demand in China: A Provincial Analysis

The general concern on the environmental implications of the rising demand for coal registered in China during the last few years has induced considerable research effort to produce accurate forecasts of China’s energy requirements. Nevertheless, no previous study has modelled the coal demand in China at provincial level. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we estimate and forecast the Chinese demand for coal using panel data disaggregated by provinces and accounting for spatial heterogeneity. Second, given the spatial nature of the data, we explicitly capture the spatial autocorrelation among provinces using spatial econometrics. In particular, we specify the Chinese industrial coal demand at provincial level with a fixed-effect spatial lag model and a fixed-effect spatial error model. The fixedeffect spatial lag model seems to better capture the existing interdependence between provinces. This model forecasts an average annual increase in coal demand to 2010 of 4 percent.Energy demand in China, Coal demand in China, Chinese provinces, Panel data; Spatial econometrics, Forecasting

A Nonparametric Analysis of Energy Environmental Kuznets Curve in Chinese Provinces

Energy resources are an important material foundation for the survival and development of human society, and the relationship between energy and economy is interactive and complementary. This paper analyzes the energy consumption–economic growth nexus in Chinese provinces using novel and recent nonparametric time-series as well as panel data empirical approaches. The dataset covers 30 provinces over the period of 1980-2018. The empirical analysis indicates the presence of a nonlinear functional form and smooth structural changes in most of the provinces. The nonparametric empirical analysis validates the presence of a nonlinear unit root problem in energy consumption and economic growth, and nonlinear cointegration between the variables. Additionally, the nonparametric panel cointegration test reports evidence of convergence in energy consumption and economic growth patterns across the provinces. The nonparametric regression analysis finds economic growth to have a positive effect, on average, on energy consumption in all provinces, except for Beijing. Further, the energy environmental Kuznets curve exists between economic growth and energy consumption in 20 out of 30 Chinese provinces. The Granger causality analysis reveals the presence of a mixed causal relationship between economic growth and energy consumption. The empirical findings have important implications for Chinese authorities in planning for improving energy efficiency, decoupling between economic growth and energy consumption, and reducing the environmental footprint of provinces

Structural patterns of city-level CO2 emissions in Northwest China

In Northwest China, quantifying city-level CO2 emissions is fundamental to CO2 alleviation but encounters difficulties in data availability and quality. Further, structuring city-level emissions could be conductive to CO2 reduction. This study applies a practical methodology to 16 northwestern Chinese cities to grasp their historical trajectories of CO2 emissions. Then, structuring CO2 emissions is explored in terms of industrial structure, energy mix and urban-rural disparities for 8 northwestern Chinese cities. Results show that: (1) for 16 cities (2010–2015), capital and industrial cities generated most emissions. Meanwhile, CO2 emissions were mostly incompatible with CO2 intensity, but consistent with CO2 per capita; (2) for 8 cities (2006–2015), energy producing sectors, heavy manufacturing sectors, and coal remained major drivers of emissions. Then, the interconnection between industrial structure and energy mix exerted temporally varying impacts on emissions from energy producing sectors and heavy manufacturing sectors. Besides, urban gas consumption and rural coal use continued affecting most of household consumption emissions and household consumption emissions per capita. Moreover, the interplay between emissions and population was changed when emissions by energy type were decomposed among urban and rural households; and (3) uncertainty results averagely fall in the range of −39% to 6%. Finally, implications for CO2 reduction and future work are proposed

An Empirical Study of Shanxi’s Coal Resource-dependent Economic Development

China’s economic development has made a remarkable achievement over the past three decades. However, compared with other developed economies, it still mainly relies on coal resources as its primary energy. As country’s leading coal resources producer, Shanxi is now in an awkward position. A possible explanation is this region suffering “Resource Curse”: that the abundant resources did not bring rapid and comprehensive development, but instead, it generated a series of severe constraints. This paper attempts to provide evidence for resource curse theory through comparing Resource Abundance Index with economic growth among China’s 27 regions; and then to analyse Shanxi' s plight from several particular aspects. It is relevant to show a picture that these constraints, as explanations to resource curse, based on Circular Cumulative Causation theory, has formed a backwash effects, which in turn exacerbated the resource curse on regional economic development

The Integration of Energy, Environment and Health Policies in China: A Review

The goal of sustainable development is far from being achieved in China. In this context, this paper aims to provide an overview of China’s energy, environment and health policies over the past 30 years and discuss whether the previous policies have fully integrated the energy, environment and health issues in its sustainable development agenda. From the overview, we observe that the energy policies accelerating energy industrial upgrading, stimulating development of new energy sources, deregulating energy pricing mechanism, promoting energy saving and seizing the opportunity of green growth are conducive to an improvement of environmental conditions and public health in China. However, the environmental policies are not effectively implemented and subsequently they could not succeed in reducing environmental risks on public health and putting pressure on enterprises to efficiently use energy. The health policies have not taken real actions to focus with any specificity on energy-induced or pollution-induced health problems

China's energy consumption and economic activity at the regional level

Since 2013, China's economy has undergone a series of major structural changes under the new normal. This study aimed to research China's plateauing regional-level energy consumption at this stage by analysing socioeconomic factors driving energy consumption changes from 2002 to 2019 through decomposition analysis and regional value chains. The results indicate that the annual growth rate of China's energy consumption dropped from 10% between 2002 and 2013 to 2% between 2013 and 2019, mainly attributable to energy efficiency enhancement offsetting the −27% increase from 2013 to 2019 and structural changes. At the regional level, the three structural drivers were closely related, including the regional structure, industrial structure and energy structure. Under the new normal, the −2.58% contribution of the regional structure to energy consumption growth was mainly made by regions with a high energy efficiency; one way to improve the energy efficiency was to upgrade the regional industrial structure, leading to the slowdown by 0.26%; and industrial transition could be accompanied by adjustment of the energy structure towards relatively clean energy, thereby offsetting growth by −0.13%. The energy consumption required to create value-added outflows along regional value chains varied greatly across regions, sectors and years

How China's electricity generation sector can achieve its carbon intensity reduction targets?

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. As the largest sector with decarbonization potential, electricity generation is critical for achieving carbon intensity reduction targets of China by 2020 and 2030. This study combines temporal decomposition and scenario analysis to identify the key drivers and provinces with increasing carbon intensity of electricity generation (CIE) and designs four scenarios by integrating efficiency improvement and structural adjustment in 30 provinces of China, and estimates the possible reduction of CIE by 2020 and 2030. Results show that 1) CIE in China decreases by 7.25% during 2001–2015. The estimated CIE during 12th FYP in this study is 25% lower than the estimation using IPCC emission factors, which is closer to China's reality. 2) Driving forces of CIE changes in 30 provinces vary greatly across provinces. The increasing CIE in four worse-performance regions (i.e. Northeast, South Coast, Southwest, Northwest) is mainly caused by energy mix effect and geographic distribution effect. The CIE growth in South Coast is also related to thermal power share effect. 3) Both 2020/2030 targets can be achieved by regulating the drivers for CIE growth in 30 provinces (i.e., RAK scenario). CIE decline is concentrated in three types of provinces, namely provinces with large economic size, strong policy support and clean energy implementation. The findings and recommendations provide insights into achieving 2020/2030 targets for CIE reduction

Assessing Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) as an Alternative Material for Mid-Rise Residential Buildings in Cold Regions in China—A Life-Cycle Assessment Approach

Timber building has gained more and more attention worldwide due to it being a generic renewable material and having low environmental impact. It is widely accepted that the use of timber may be able to reduce the embodied energy of a building. However, the development of timber buildings in China is not as rapid as in some other countries. This may be because of the limitations of building regulations and technological development. Several new policies have been or are being implemented in China in order to encourage the use of timber in building construction and this could lead to a revolutionary change in the building industry in China. This paper is the first one to examine the feasibility of using Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) as an alternative solution to concrete by means of a cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment in China. A seven-storey reference concrete building in Xi’an was selected as a case study in comparison with a redesigned CLT building. Two cities in China, in cold and severe cold regions (Xi’an and Harbin), were selected for this research. The assessment includes three different stages of the life span of a building: materialisation, operation, and end-of-life. The inventory data used in the materialisation stage was mostly local, in order to ensure that the assessment appropriately reflects the situation in China. Energy consumption in the operation stage was obtained from simulation by commercialised software IESTM, and different scenarios for recycling of timber material in the end-of-life are discussed in this paper. The results from this paper show that using CLT to replace conventional carbon intensive material would reduce energy consumption by more than 30% and reduce CO2 emission by more than 40% in both cities. This paper supports, and has shown the potential of, CLT being used in cold regions with proper detailing to minimise environmental impact