Research On The Relationship Between Clean Energy Consumption And Economic Growth In China

The trend of global warming is getting obvious so that the low-carbon economy comes to the common choice of many countries. As the biggest developing country in the world, China has become the second biggest energy consumption and Green House Gas emission country. Under this background, how to coordinate the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth speed under the constraint the low-carbon economy is becoming a popular topic. Clean energy, as an energy type that does not generate or rarely generates Green House Gas, is a good choice. Meanwhile, the renewable energy which also belongs to clean energy has a vital role for easing the energy pressures in the future. Currently, most of the researches concentrate in discovering the relationships between the total energy consumption and economic growth. There is rare research that narrows down to the casual relationship between clean energy consumption and economic growth. Based on reviewing abundant relevant research and theories, this article states the current development of the clean energy technology and consumption, explains the mechanism how the clean energy consumption stimulates the economic growth. More importantly, it focuses on using the empirical analysis to find out the correlate and dynamic casual relationships between the clean energy consumption and economic growth in China. The result of the empirical analysis shows there is positive effect from the consumption of clean energy to economic growth and this effect mainly through the use of nuclear energy and hydro energy. The long-term equilibrium relationship is also found between clean energy consumption and economic growth, the clean energy consumption elasticity coefficient in the short term is0.556while the figure in the long term is1.653which means the impact from clean energy consumption to economic growth in the long run is bigger than in the short run. At the end of this paper, the policies recommendations according to different clean energy type are given out, for example the quality of nuclear energy should be emphasized and the speed must be controlled, paying attention to the environmental problem that using hydro energy may bring, the focus should be put on the development of new renewable energy such as wind power or solar power.