Provincial Sustainability Evaluation Based on the Standardized National Emergy Database

Abstract

Emergy evaluations at the provincial level provide unique insight into the resource basis of economic organization and the sustainability of ecological and economic system. Present evaluations towards the sustainable development among provinces in China mainly from the extra representative indexes, lacking an internal analysis of mechanism. The existing framework for emergy analysis at the national scale is well-defined with tables for quantifying and aggregating system inputs and computing indices to summarize condition. Thus, an overall emergy evaluation containing data from every province in China is highly needed. Baesd on National Emergy Accounting Database (NEAD), an emergy-based provincial framework was proposed including five modules: renewable flows, internal transformations, indigenous nonrenewable extraction, imports and exports. However, the processes of gathering raw data necessary for tabular synthesis and applying consistent energy conversions and unit emergy values for translating physical flows to emergy units, needs to be re-standardized on a provincial scale. In addition, inconsistencies among data sources at the provincial level can create problems on comparative analysis between provinces. Through exploring new methods in formalizing data sources and re-building the accounting framework, we will develop a standardized national emergy database containing the primary data, energy conversion ratios and unit emergy values needed to calculate provincial flows for recent decades for 34 provinces and regions and municipalities to provide a powerful and credible comparative provincial emergy analysis in China. Analysis results will be ranked in order to find the most eco-friendly provinces as well as the most substantial development patterns. According to the states of sustainability of 34 provinces and regions, the spatial analysis will be conducted. With the support of data over the years, the dynamic evolution mechanism will be discussed to summary the general trends.