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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]