Investigating the interactions between Chinese economic growth, energy consumption and its air environmental cost during 1989–2016 and forecasting their future trends

Abstract

The fast growing Chinese economy consumes large amounts of energy and thus incurs high air emissions. The interactions between Chinese economy, energy and its air environmental cost are worth further exploring for promoting the sustainability of the country. To this end, several indicators, based on currency, energy and emergy, are constructed to depict the interrelations between the three factors during 1989–2016, and then a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) Model is adopted to forecast the trends of these interactions in the future. It is found that: (1) Chinese energy efficiency increases by 62.24%; (2) air environmental cost per unit energy use decreases by 39.46%; (3) air environmental cost per unit economic output decreases by 77.14%; (4) structure coordination degree increases by 18.14 times; (5) scale harmony degree decreases by 2.70%; (6) China's energy consumption significantly enhances its economic growth and air environmental cost, and China's economic growth also very clearly promote its air environmental cost; (7) Chinese energy consumption will obviously promote its economic growth before 2022, and China's economic growth and energy use will clearly raise the air environmental cost before 2019. Chinese government should further promote coordination between economy, energy and air environmental protection in the future.