Path Analysis of Beijing’s Dematerialization Development Based on System Dynamics

Tiejun Dai,Shuo Shan

doi:10.3390/su12030829

Abstract

Dematerialization is a phenomenon in which resource consumption and pollutant discharge decrease during economic development. In order to explore the optimal paths of Beijing’s dematerialization, this study combines material flow analysis method and the Tapio decoupling model to construct a city dematerialization evaluation model, and establishes a system dynamics model to simulate the comprehensive dematerialization levels and the dematerialization levels of eight materials under four scenarios. The results show that the key factors affecting the dematerialization levels of resource and discharge end were non-metals consumption and CO2 emissions respectively. During 2016–2030, Beijing would achieve weak decoupling state under four scenarios, but the degree of dematerialization would be different. For the comprehensive dematerialization level, during 2017–2024, an industrial restructuring (IR) scenario, which would strengthen R&D investment and optimize the industrial structure, would be the optimal choice. During 2025–2030, an environmental governance (EG) scenario, which means increasing the investment in pollution control, would bring about the best dematerialization level. There would be differences in the optimal dematerialization paths for eight materials. For example, economic sustainable degrowth (ESD) and EG scenarios would be the optimal paths for dematerialization of atmospheric pollutants in the period 2017–2021 and 2022–2030, respectively.

Highlights

The rapid development of the global economy has brought a lot of resource consumption, environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions [1]
The decoupling index usually describes the relationship between changes in the percentage of resources consumption or pollutants discharge and the corresponding changes in the percentage of GDP, which can accurately reflect the degree of dematerialization [22,23]
The first part shows the historical trend of the comprehensive dematerialization level in Beijing, and the relationship between the dematerialization indexes of eight constituent materials and resource end and discharge end

Summary

Introduction

The rapid development of the global economy has brought a lot of resource consumption, environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions [1]. A large amount of energy consumption in the global economic activities has brought about a sharp increase in carbon emissions. Many scholars use the concept of dematerialization to measure the reduction of resource pressure and environmental pressure in the process of economic development, which reflects the materials reduction of resource end and discharge end in the whole system. It includes the decrease of material input from ecological environment system to economic system, and the decrease of pollutants from economic system to ecological environment system [8,9,10,11]

Methods

Results

Conclusion