Materials Flows Analysis of Fossil Fuels in China during 2000-2007

Abstract

Since the relationship between supply and demand of fossil fuels is on edge in the long run, the contradiction between economic construction and limited resources will hinder the sustainable development of Chinese society. This paper aims to analyze the input of fossil fuels in China during 2000-2007 via material flow analysis (MFA) that takes hidden flows into account. With the coal, oil and natural gas quantified by MFA, three indexes, total material requirement, resource consumption intensity and resource productivity, are proposed to reflect the interaction about population, GDP and fossil fuels. The results indicated that in the past 8 years, China's requirement for fossil fuels has been increasing continuously because of the growing mine productivity in domestic areas, which also leads to single energy consumption structure as well as excessive dependence on domestic exploitation. It is suggested to enhance the utilization efficiency, recycle the materials, and develop new energy resource as well as strengthen international cooperation and increase the import fossil energy to promote the mode of fossil fuels consumption and create lower carbon economy in China. Finally, according to the correlation-analysis, the increasing GDP is found to be based on material requirement associated with excessive resource exploitation, although it improves the resource productivity.