China's industrial sector in an international context

Abstract

The industrial sector accounts for 40% of global energy use. In 1995, developing countries used an estimated 48 EJ for industrial production, over one-third of world total industrial primary energy use (Price et al., 1998). Industrial output and energy use in developing countries is dominated by China, India, and Brazil. China alone accounts for about 30 EJ (National Bureau of Statistics, 1999), or about 23% of world industrial energy use. China's industrial sector is extremely energy-intensive and accounted for almost 75% of the country's total energy use in 1997. Industrial energy use in China grew an average of 6.6% per year, from 14 EJ in 1985 to 30 EJ in 1997 (Sinton et al., 1996; National Bureau of Statistics, 1999). This growth is more than three times faster than the average growth that took place in the world during the past two decades. The industrial sector can be divided into light and heavy industry, reflecting the relative energy-intensity of the manufacturing processes. In China, about 80% of the energy used in the industrial sector is consumed by heavy industry. Of this, the largest energy-consuming industries are chemicals, ferrous metals, and building materials (Sinton et al., 1996). This paper presents the results of international comparisons of production levels and energy use in six energy-intensive subsectors: iron and steel, aluminum, cement, petroleum refining, ammonia, and ethylene. The sectoral analysis results indicate that energy requirements to produce a unit of raw material in China are often higher than industrialized countries for most of the products analyzed in this paper, reflecting a significant potential to continue to improve energy efficiency in heavy industry.