Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Primary energy consumption structure and the influencing factors in China: an income decomposition and post-economic crisis era perspective

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Environmental Science and Pollution Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

China’s coal-based energy structure makes its carbon peak and neutrality goals very challenging. As a result, optimizing the energy structure has become an important means, and researching its influencing factors and trends has become the foundation and prerequisite for policy formulation related to energy structure optimization. Especially after the severe economic crisis, the economic structure has undergone profound changes, and the impact of related factors on the energy structure has also changed. This study adopts regression methods considering heteroskedasticity and cross-section correlation to study the panel data of 30 provinces in China and obtains the changes in the relationship between fossil and non-fossil fuel consumption in different regions and their influencing factors after two global financial crises. Research results show that China’s energy consumption tends to decouple from GDP. Income structure changes, especially trade changes, are important factors in influencing energy consumption and energy structure. The deviation between energy resource distribution and consumption distribution tends to increase. Regional heteroskedasticity is evident in the impact of urbanization development models, energy prices, and efficiency.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The datasets are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

References

  • Al-Mulali U, Che NBCS (2012) The impact of energy consumption and CO2 emission on the economic and financial development in 19 selected countries. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 16:4365–4369

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Apergis N, Payne JE (2009) Energy consumption and economic growth in Central America: evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model. Energy Economics 31:211–216

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bai C-E, Hsieh C-T, Song, ZM (2016) The long shadow of China’s fiscal expansion. No. w22801. National Bureau of Economic Research

  • Bilgen S (2014) Structure and environmental impact of global energy consumption. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 38:890–902

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Chang J, Leung DYC, Wu CZ, Yuan ZH (2003) A review on the energy production, consumption, and prospect of renewable energy in China. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 7:453–468

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chong CH, Pei L, Ma L, Zheng L, Ni W, Xu L, Song S (2017) LMDI decomposition of energy consumption in Guangdong Province, China, based on an energy allocation diagram. Energy 133:525–544

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dogan E, Seker F (2016) An investigation on the determinants of carbon emissions for OECD countries: empirical evidence from panel models robust to heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int 23:14646–14655

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • de Freitas LC, Kaneko S (2011) Decomposing the decoupling of CO2 emissions and economic growth in Brazil. Ecol Econ 70:1459–1469

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fan Y, Liao H, Wei Y (2007) Can market oriented economic reforms contribute to energy efficiency improvement? Evidence from China. Energy Policy 35:2287–2295

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fan Y, Xia Y (2012) Exploring energy consumption and demand in China. Energy 40:23–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feng T, Sun L, Zhang Y (2009) The relationship between energy consumption structure, economic structure and energy intensity in China. Energy Policy 37:5475–5483

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fisher-Vanden K, Jefferson GH, Liu H, Tao Q (2004) What is driving China’s decline in energy intensity? Resource & Energy Economics 26:77–97

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gozgor G, Chi KML, Zhou L (2018) Energy consumption and economic growth: new evidence from the OECD countries. Energy 153:27–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee CC (2005) Energy consumption and GDP in developing countries: a cointegrated panel analysis. Energy Economics 27:415–427

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li F, Dong S, Li X, Liang Q, Yang W (2011) Energy consumption-economic growth relationship and carbon dioxide emissions in China. Energy Policy 39:568–574

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li GD, Yamaguchi D, Lin HS, Nagai, M (2006) The simulation modeling about the developments of GDP, population and primary energy consumption in China based on MATLAB, IEEE conference on cybernetics and intelligent systems: 1–6, IEEE

  • Li K, Lin B (2015) Impacts of urbanization and industrialization on energy consumption/CO2 emissions: does the level of development matter? Renew Sustain Energy Rev 52:1107–1122

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Liao H, Wei YM (2010) China’s energy consumption: a perspective from Divisia aggregation approach. Energy 35:28–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Narayan PK, Popp S (2012) The energy consumption-real GDP nexus revisited: Empirical evidence from 93 countries. Econ Model 29:303–308

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC) (2020) China energy statistical yearbook 2020, Beijing. China Statistics Press

  • NBSC (2021a) China statistical yearbook 2021, Beijing. China Statistics Press

  • NBSC (2021b) National Accounts. National Bureau of Statistics of China. http://data.stats.gov.cn/easyquery.htm?cn=C01. Accessed March 2022

  • Park JH, Hong TH (2013) Analysis of South Korea’s economic growth, carbon dioxide emission, and energy consumption using the Markov switching model. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 18:543–551

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roinioti A, Koroneos C (2017) The decomposition of CO2 emissions from energy use in Greece before and during the economic crisis and their decoupling from economic growth. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 76:448–459

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saboori B, Sulaiman J (2013) Environmental degradation, economic growth and energy consumption: evidence of the environmental Kuznets curve in Malaysia. Energy Policy 60:892–905

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsai SB (2016) Using grey models for forecasting China’s growth trends in renewable energy consumption. Clean Technol Environ Policy 18:563–571

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tugcu CT, Topcu M (2018) Total, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and economic growth: Revisiting the issue with an asymmetric point of view. Energy 152: 64–74

  • Wandji YDF (2013) Energy consumption and economic growth: evidence from Cameroon. Energy Policy 61:1295–1304

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang Q, Su M (2020) Drivers of decoupling economic growth from carbon emission – an empirical analysis of 192 countries using decoupling model and decomposition method. Environ Impact Assess Rev 81:106356

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang T, Lin B (2017) China’s natural gas consumption peak and factors analysis: a regional perspective. J Clean Prod 142:548–564

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang T, Lin B (2019) Fuel consumption in road transport: a comparative study of China and OECD countries. J Clean Prod 206:156–170

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wei YM, Liao H, Fan Y (2007) An empirical analysis of energy efficiency in China’s iron and steel sector. Energy 32:2262–2270

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wu Y, Zhu Q, Zhu B (2018) Comparisons of decoupling trends of global economic growth and energy consumption between developed and developing countries. Energy Policy 116:30–38

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yuan C, Liu S, Fang Z, Xie N (2010) The relation between Chinese economic development and energy consumption in the different periods. Energy Policy 38:5189–5198

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yuan JH, Kang JG, Zhao CH, Hu ZG (2008) Energy consumption and economic growth: evidence from China at both aggregated and disaggregated levels. Energy Economics 30:3077–3094

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang H, Lahr ML (2014) China’s energy consumption change from 1987 to 2007: a multiregional structural decomposition analysis. Energy Policy 67:682–693

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou Z, Wu W, Wang X, Chen Q, Wang O (2009) Analysis of changes in the structure of rural household energy consumption in northern China: a case study. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 13:187–193

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers 72173046, 72174113, and 71603086).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, 311121, People’s Republic of China

    Ting Wang

  2. Institute of Finance and Economics Research, School of Urban and Regional Science, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, 200433, People’s Republic of China

    Jianghua Liu

  3. Department of Sociology, Taiwan Chengchi University, Taipei, 116011, People’s Republic of China

    Yongqiang Xu

Authors
  1. Ting Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jianghua Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Yongqiang Xu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Jianghua Liu and Ting Wang are mainly responsible for material preparation, data collection, and analysis. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Jianghua Liu and mainly revised by Yongqiang Xu, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jianghua Liu.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

No ethics-related information.

Consent to participate

I am free to contact any of the people involved in the research to seek further clarification and information.

Consent for publication

This manuscript has not been published or presented elsewhere in part or in entirety and is not under consideration by another journal.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Responsible Editor: Roula Inglesi-Lotz

Publisher's note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wang, T., Liu, J. & Xu, Y. Primary energy consumption structure and the influencing factors in China: an income decomposition and post-economic crisis era perspective. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 77908–77926 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21202-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21202-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation