Abstract
There are very few useful work and exergy analysis studies for China, and fewer still that consider how the results inform drivers of past and future energy consumption. This is surprising: China is the world’s largest energy consumer, whilst exergy analysis provides a robust thermodynamic framework for analysing the technical efficiency of energy use. In response, we develop three novel sub-analyses. First we perform a long-term whole economy time-series exergy analysis for China (1971–2010). We find a 10-fold growth in China’s useful work since 1971, which is supplied by a 4-fold increase in primary energy coupled to a 2.5-fold gain in aggregate exergy conversion efficiency to useful work: from 5% to 12.5%. Second, using index decomposition we expose the key driver of efficiency growth as not ‘technological leapfrogging’ but structural change: i.e. increasing reliance on thermodynamically efficient (but very energy intensive) heavy industrial activities. Third, we extend our useful work analysis to estimate China’s future primary energy demand, and find values for 2030 that are significantly above mainstream projections.
Highlights
As the world’s economic powerhouse and largest energy consumer [1], much effort is spent understanding China’s historical energy consumption (e.g. [2,3,4]) and future energy demand [5,6,7]
We develop a useful work based method for projecting China’s primary energy demand to 2030, and test implications of potential future declines in the rate of exergy efficiency improvement
(4), which is based on task-level useful work (Uij) and primary exergy (Eij), enabling the historical results to act as the input data for the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) analysis
Summary
As the world’s economic powerhouse and largest energy consumer [1], much effort is spent understanding China’s historical energy consumption (e.g. [2,3,4]) and future energy demand [5,6,7]. [2,3,4]) and future energy demand [5,6,7] These studies typically examine primary or final energy data, rather than useful work values obtained using an exergy analysis based technique. This is the research gap that this paper seeks to address. We develop a useful work based method for projecting China’s primary energy demand to 2030, and test implications of potential future declines in the rate of exergy efficiency improvement.
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