Economic Growth and Energy Consumption --Assessing Different Options in Chinese Energy Security Strategies

摘要

Since the introduction of economic reforms.China has seen a tremendous economic development with growth rates around 10% p.a.during the past 25-30 years. China is expected to quadruple its GDP per capita by 2020. Without any Control measures, energy consumption and emissions would also quadruple. This would cause both severe energy security problems in terms of insufficient coal transport capacities and unfavourable imports of crude oil. In order to avoid negative implications for a sustainable development, the Chinese government envisages a gap on primary energy consumption of 3 bn, t sce by 2020. Calculating in purchasing power parities, China has to reduce its GDP per capita by 53% in 2020 compared to 2000 to reach this goal. This means, energy intensity of GDP has to be reduced to a level of 30% below the current average of industrialised countries by 2020. Since the beginning of the current 11th Five Year Plan, energy security policy is actively to be supported by environmental policy in terms of resource saving, especially regarding to fossil energy sources. This paper aims at assessing different options of energy security and environmental policy. Estimating China's primary energy consumption until 2020 with a disaggregated econometric model, the most efficient option is the improvement of coal efficiency, followed by the improvement of oil efficiency, the promotion of hydro power and the substitution of coal with natural gas, nuclear energy and non-hydro renewable energies.