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Abstract: The sustainability of Chinese economy has attracted attentions from all over the world since China''s reform & opening up policy. This paper attempted to evaluate the relationships among Chinese economy, energy and its impact of emissions during 1991–2009 using several novel indicators based on emergy, energy and monetary units. The results show that NH3-N in wastewater has taken main responsibility for impact of emissions, the hidden environmental cost per unit economic output has been continuously reduced, education and R & D investment has cut pollutants generating intensity since 1997, and environmental protection investment has cut emission intensity since 1996. Generally speaking, the coordination degree of structure and scale of China''s economy has been improved to different degree from 1991 to 2009. However, the growth of education and R & D investment and environmental protection investment has not prevented impact of emissions from increase caused by economic aggregate growth, and the turning point has not appeared in this period. Finally, this paper discusses some related issues and puts forward the corresponding suggestions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• GDIM is used to investigate the influencing factors of energy-related PM 2.5 emissions in China. • A novel decoupling indicator is constructed based on GDIM decomposition results. • The increase of PM 2.5 emissions is primarily due to output scale and energy use effects. • Emission intensity and emission coefficients are the main factors decreasing PM 2.5 emissions. • Technical effect plays an important role in promoting the decoupling of PM 2.5 emissions. Haze pollution has become a severe threat to China's sustainable development. It is crucial to provide a complete explanation for the mechanism behind the changes in PM 2.5 pollution and explore how to decouple economic growth from PM 2.5 pollution. Compared with the traditional decomposition analysis methods, the Generalized Divisia Index Method (GDIM) integrates multiple influencing factors and provides a fuller understanding of the influence mechanism of PM 2.5 pollution. In addition, the decomposition of the monitored PM 2.5 concentration in previous studies leads to ambiguous economic meanings of some relative impact indicators. In this paper, GDIM decomposition is applied to study the driving factors of energy-related PM 2.5 emissions changes in China. Then, based on the GDIM decomposition results, this paper constructs a novel decoupling indicator to study the decoupling relationship between PM 2.5 emissions and economic growth, and the contributions of the technical and non-technical factors to the decoupling indicator are quantified. The main results are summarized as follows. (1) The output scale effect and energy use effect are the main reasons for the increase of PM 2.5 emissions, while the emission intensity effect and emission coefficient effect make major contributions to decreasing PM 2.5 emissions. The effects of population, per capita emissions, per capita output, and energy intensity are relatively minor. (2) China and its three economic regions move from strong decoupling in 1998–2000 to weak decoupling during 2000–2010, and then into strong decoupling over the period of 2010–2014. (3) Technical effect plays an important role in promoting the decoupling between PM 2.5 emissions and economic growth, but its contribution shows a downward trend over time. In contrast, non-technical effect hinders the decoupling process, and its contribution is decreasing from 2000 to 2014. This paper is supportive for formulating emissions reduction policies and improving China's air quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing conflict between economic growth, energy and environment in China has restrained the country's economic development. In this work we investigated the interaction among the Chinese economy, energy production and consumption and the impacts of concomitant air emissions from 2000 to 2011, using an indicator system based on energy, emergy and money units. The results show that China's rapid economic growth has promoted tremendous expansion in energy production and consumption, which have led to increasing the impact of emissions in this study period. During the time examined, energy production and use efficiencies and the structure of the energy sector improved slightly; the self-sufficiency of energy use fluctuated, as petroleum took on an increasingly strong dependence on imports; fossil energy, mainly coming from coal, still has a majority share in energy production and consumption of the nation; the environmental loading intensity of energy consumption decreased slightly while that of energy production increased; most of the impacts of energy-related emissions are derived from their impact on human health; the impact of emissions from energy production made an increasing contribution to the total impact. Generally speaking, China's economic growth still heavily depends on energy-intensive industries that put great pressure on energy supply and pollution control. Although China has made obvious progress in energy mix optimization to save energy and reduce emissions, the pace of improvement still fell behind that of economic growth. Finally, this paper discussed some related issues and presented corresponding suggestions to further coordinate the relationship between the economy, energy production and consumption and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper reports China''s eco-efficiency trends and the cause of their dynamic behavior during the period 1978–2010. We show three main results. First, in general, eco-efficiency indicators increased for resource utilization, energy consumption and emissions for air and water, and relative decoupling occurred in China at a high level in the global context. Second, decoupling from economic growth has been absolute for the discharge of soot, chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen. Third, during the years 2001–2010, the decoupling level was very low, and resource utilization was almost coupled with GDP due to the high consumption and dramatic increase of mineral extraction. The causes of the observed dynamics of eco-efficiency and decoupling were also explored, with the conclusion drawn that the effect of technology was the predominant positive factor while structure effects were the negative factors for resource and energy efficiency; the technological effect of pipe-end treatment played a dominant role in the improving eco-efficiency of pollutant emissions and decoupling from economic growth. Furthermore, implications for further policymaking to setting proper targets for the relative decoupling of resource use, especially for mineral resource use and economic growth, are suggested. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyzes the interactions among China''s economic growth and energy consumption and emissions during 1978–2007. Conventional energy and emergy are applied to quantify energy consumption and emissions’ impact respectively. Several indicators, based on emergy, energy and monetary units, are applied to depict the relationships among economic growth and energy consumption and emissions’ impact. The results show that energy consumption and emissions’ impact rise simultaneously. Therein, nonrenewable energy resources possess absolute share in total energy consumption and undertake primary responsibility for increasing emissions’ impact, and NH3–N in wastewater leads to the most emissions’ impact on environment. Energy mix and energy efficiency and pollution control make some achievements, but their improvements fall far behind economic growth rate. As a result, the structure of China''s economy has been obviously optimized; however, the improvement of the relationship between China''s economy, energy and environment is far behind that of its economic structure in this period. Therefore, China will continue to face huge pressure on resources and environment its rapid economic growth brings about in future. Those study results imply that enhancing energy efficiency, optimizing economic structure and strengthening pollution control will still be the main tasks for China''s governments in future. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]