Analysis of the Dependence on Economic Growth in China to Energy Consumption

Abstract

In recent years, China's economic development has attracted worldwide attention, but economic growth has been at the expense of the excessive consumption of energy. Per unit of GDP’s energy consumption in China is not only much higher than the United States, Japan and other developed countries that are far higher than the world average. On basis of simple analysis on the cause of excessive energy consumption in our country, this paper uses the econometrics method to study the various factors in the economic growth and how they affect the level of the energy consumption. Finally, this paper puts forward the proposal of optimize the industrial structure in our country, as well as development of new energy and so on. Only in this way can we at the same time in the guarantee of our country's economic growth and reduce energy consumption, which improve the effect of energy efficiency achieved particularly remarkable. 1. The present situation and reason of economic growth and energy consumption in our country The speed of economic growth in China has attracted worldwide attention, at the same time, our country's energy consumption is worrying for a time. While promoting the development of economy, per unit of GDP ’s energy consumption in our country is much higher than the world average. It can be say,our country's economic growth always adopts a development way which is extensive. This way could promote the economic growth in the short term, however, as the drying up of the non-renewable energy in our country, the disadvantages of this kind of development is increasingly significant. Although the added value of the second industry and the third industry in China has been in ascension. But it is undeniable that the result of rapid development of economy is the growing demand for energy.Since 2000, our country's energy production and consumption rate continued to rise, growing faster than any period since the reform and opening up. 《Chinese Development Report (2013) 》pointed out that, according to our country,per unit GDP’s energy consumption is 0.49, while the United States is 0.15, Japan is 0.08, and the average level of developing countries is 0.36. The astonishing development speed in our country is largely backed up by high energy consumption. Energy, as well as pollution of the environment, promoted our country’s economic growth for a long time. As for the present situation of energy consumption in our country, energy and economy is the important subject of the national economic development. The investment in the energy industry has been increasing, it has to do with China's growing energy consumption status. It can be seen from table 1, from 2000 to 2013, China's total energy consumption rose from 1.455 billion tons of standard coal to 4.169 billion tons of standard coal, Consumption has increased by 2.86 times. Meanwhile, one-time energy production and consumption has accounted for the proportion of over 90% of the total energy consumption in our country, mainly coal consumption, followed by oil and gas consumption. With the development of science and technology in recent years, the proportion of water and electricity, nuclear power and wind power consumption increased. This is the main trend of energy consumption of our country at present. At the same time, our country's energy loss has not International Conference on Economics, Social Science, Arts, Education and Management Engineering (ESSAEME 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 697 been more effectively control, energy loss and energy consumption almost synchronous growth in our country. Excessive energy demand, with the limited production capacity and energy efficiency, causes our country's energy imports increased by 4.3 times in recent ten years. Table 1 the situation of energy consumption in our country from 2000 to 2013 Source: national bureau of statistics《China statistical yearbook (2000~2013) 》 The rapid growth of the demand for energy consumption related to the development situation of our country's economy at the present stage. First of all, with the growth of the national economy, the pace of the industrialization , the urbanization and informatization is accelerating, and residents' consumption level is rising,too.With more and more urban population, energy consumption intensity in the city is much higher than in rural areas. Among them, the housing area continues to expand, maintaining daily life consumption, etc., are all caused urban energy products to increase.The supply of water, heat, as well as gas , was significantly boost the energy consumption demand in urban. On the other hand, urban population increase and the consumption structure upgrade makes urban infrastructure investment increasing. The size of the transportation in the city's expansion and the growth of private car ownership are all make oil, electricity and other energy consumption greatly ascend. Second, it related to the unreasonable industry structure at the present stage in China. In the industrialization stage, some traditional energy-intensive industries is still occupy large proportion in the economic structure in our country, while the development of the high and new technology industry is limited. Generally, the production level of the energy-intensive industries is lag behind others. Besides, these equipment is aging and overcapacity. This further increased the energy consumption in our country. 2. Establishing and testing the econometric model In order to verify the influence of different factors on the energy consumption in our country, this article selects the data from 2000 to 2013 , among them ,this article uses the total energy consumption in our country as the explained variable, explanatory variables including China's gross domestic product (GDP) in each year and part of high energy consumption factors in our country mentioned above. This paper intends to establish multiple linear regression model as follows: 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 Y= + X + X + X X u        With Y represents the the total energy consumption in our country, the unit is ten thousand tons of standard coal; 1 X represents the gross domestic product (GDP); 2 X represents the private car ownership in the whole society; 3 X represents the employment of the second industry in China; 4 X represents the total energy use efficiency. Using Eviews5.0 software, this paper analyzes the data in table 1, the results are shown in the below table: