Study On Strategic Environmental Assessment Of Urban Development Plan Based On Energy Decoupling Theory

The sustainable development of cities, with rich and complicate content, is a critical part of China’s sustainable development, and one of its basic and important links is energy. As we know, for various historical causes, the development of China’s urbanization lags behind the development of economic, society and industrialization for a long time. But China’s urbanization certainly will go back to the harmony development with industrialization, which means that Chinese cities will stay in fast massive development for quite a long period in the future. However, the increasingly accelerated urbanization is restricted by such factors as huge population burden, fragile eco-environment and energy shortage.As the guideline to push and guide the city development, urban development plan covers all aspects including urban economy, society, resource and environment. Besides, urban industrialization level, the industrial structure features, production technology level, population development and the like are of importance to not only the sustainable development of national economy but also, most of all, to the solution of overall problems such as urban energy consumption and environmental protection. Currently, with the overall transformation of national energy strategies, energy conservation has become China’s fundamental policy. Under new historical situations, SEA (namely, Strategic Environmental Assessment) of urban development plan should strengthen macro-control, optimize urban industrial structure, and guarantee that the sustainable energy strategy will fulfill its historic role in the urban development plan. However, China’s SEA practice still cannot meet the requirement of national development plan.First, the article defines the theoretical foundation of the SEA study based on energy "decoupling", which comprises the basic theory of "decoupling" theory, circular economy theory, energy conservation, energy economic science, eco-city theory. Sustainable use of urban energy is the ultimate target of the SEA study based on energy "decoupling". "Decoupling" is the presentation of circular economy theory, eco-city is the important development mode to realize energy conservation in the urban and energy economic science provides guideline to the detail technological approaches.At present, the huge pressure confronting by China’s environmental assessment comes from both national energy shortage and from reduction of green house gas emissions from the international society, especially from western countries. Such grave situation at home and abroad pushes the SEA to play well the important role in promoting reduction of emission and energy conservation in China, and to increase its content and fit for the low-carbon economy idea. But China’s current SEA still confronts with problems such as emphasizing eco-environmental factors but neglecting energy factors, relative "decoupling" but absolute "decoupling", and emphasizing energy provision but neglecting energy conservation requirement of urban development. Via adapting itself to energy decoupling, SEA can well make up the gap between the theory and the practice in urban development plan.Urban development plan, which rectifies and guides the urbanization, pushes urban industrialization progress, and determines the nature, scale and development direction of city. Meanwhile, urbanization reacts on the urban development plan and completes and drives the latter. Based on the detail explanation of the relationship between the urban development plan and urbanization, the article makes an overall and thorough discussion on the mechanism of direct and indirect actions of such core factors of urban development plan as industrial structure, technological progress, energy structure, energy allocation and life styles on urban energy demands.Regression analysis is taken on the relationship between the economy growth of developed industrialized countries and energy intensity, total consumption of primary energy and traditional fossil energy consumption, and the result shows that EKC hypothesis is not always true. In the long term, primary energy and traditional fossil energy both show "roughly upward" growth, which implies a hard and long way to achieve absolute "decoupling" in energy consumption. However, as proved by South Korean development, EKC peaks of energy intensity, total consumption of primary energy and traditional fossil energy consumption can be overcome and realize the "decoupling" of energy consumption, under lower GDP per capita, via the leaping development of industrial structure and the conduction of powerful policies about energy conservation and use of clean energy. It enlightens China about the formulation and implementation of energy development strategies in the future.Targeting at various weakness in the practice, the article proposes the basic framework of the SEA of urban development plan and accordingly complete and extend the framework, which is to change existing mode of limiting related contents of energy in the balance analysis of energy provision and demands and the analysis of energy provision capacity but to create a special systemic subject for industrial development and energy conservation. The subject will first analyze and comment on the current drives of energy conservation in the urban and the "decoupling" degree of energy conservation, then focus on the analysis of accessibility of the mandatory energy conservation target, based on which the direction of the further development of the energy conservation curve will be predicted and the practicability of "decoupling" between economic growth and energy consumption will be demonstrated, and at last, propose detail advice and measures about plan adjustment. Also, the applications of scenario analysis, index decomposition analysis and department analysis are discussed in this section.At the end of the article, the SEA of the development strategy of the Tianjin New Coastal District (TNCD) will be taken as a case to be studied. As the result shows, the TNCD can achieve the energy conservation target of reducing 20% of energy every ten-thousand-Yuan GDP in the year of 2010, via optimizing industrial structure, increasing the ratio of technology-intensive industries in the district and strictly govern the clean production of products under key control with high energy consumption. On the basis, the TNCD can further take measures to strictly control the scale of heave chemical industry, to strengthen the development of renewable energy and the like. Therefore, the curve of primary energy and fossil fuel energy will meet break-over points in the future. Wherein, the consumption of fossil energy can achieve "decoupling" with economic development under lower GDP per capita. The analysis of the case shows it’s practical to carry out the technological mode, content framework and technological methods proposed in the article and based on the energy "decoupling" theory of SEA.