Investigating economic growth, energy consumption and their impact on CO₂ emissions targets in China

Abstract

This article aims to analyse economic growth, energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions data in China comparing with the US and Japanese data. Then, we try to evaluate the Chinese government's targets in reducing energy use and carbon intensity. Economic growth is a key factor that determines the Chinese's ability to meet these targets. If we suppose that China's economic growth is maintained at 9.54% per year, and total primary energy supply (TPES) growth is stabilized at 3.82% on average, the country would be able to cut energy consumption per unit amount of gross domestic product (GDP) by 23.5% in 2010: if carbon-GDP intensity could decrease by 4.5% on average, China would be able to achieve a reduction in carbon-GDP emissions target by 49.87% or above the target in 2020. We suggest that China needs to stabilize CO₂ per total primary energy supply intensity. This target can also push government to implement clean coal technology and promote renewable energy target more seriously. Finally, we argue that binding target on CO₂ emissions has worked effectively in the case of Japan, but we have to be careful when analysing economic-energy-CO₂ emissions in Japan due to ‘the lost decade’ of Japan's economy. Finally, we expect that developed countries such as Japan and the United States can help China not only in transferring technology but also in strengthening the institutional capacity such as in harmonizing regulations, in energy planning and in developing human capability.

Keywords:

• economic growth
• energy consumption
• primary energy supply
• carbon dioxide emission
• China
• Japan
• the United States

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions on the early draft of this article, which improved the quality of the content. We are responsible for any remaining errors.

Notes

1. The World Bank uses the atlas method and economies are divided according to 2008 gross national income (GNI) per capita.

2. This indicates the growth in real GDP per capita associated with reduction in poverty headcount rate.

3. Coal reserves of China are the third largest in the world after the United States and Russia (Smil 1998). Further, coal from China has fairly high heating content (Smil 1998).

4. Most of China's oil exports came from the Daqing oil field in Heilongjiang province (north-east); the coal came from Shanxi province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the north (Kambara 1992).

5. Preliminary estimates.

6. (–) indicates exports.