Research On The Driving Factors Of Embodied Energy In Chinese Trade

Since the reform and opening-up,China’s economy has achieved remarkable development.However,the development of economy and trade can’t depart from the support of a large number of energy supply,behind the rapid development of economy and trade,China is facing with increasingly serious energy consumption sit uation.Under the condition of limited energy resources,our country has to improve the import quantity of energy products,which will not only lead to pressure of energy supply and serious problems of environmental pollution,but also accused by the developed countries,such as “China energy threat theory”.Therefore,by using “Embodied Energy”this new kind of concept,we are able to explain the energy utilization of a country and it’s relationship with foreign trade.Based on the measure of China’s trade-embodied energy and the analysis of it’s driving factors,on the one hand be able to let the world understand the nature of China’s energy consumption more accurately and objectively;on the other side,it can also provide practical options and recommendations for China to complete the transformation of trade and achieve the emissions reduction targets of 13 th Five-Year Plan.Based on this background,by the 2012 China input-output table and price index, compile 2012 China comparable price input-output table.Then combine with1997,2002,2007 China comparable price input-output tables and various departments annual energy consumption data,the import and export data,merge our country’s industries into 28 departments,then calculate these 28 departments’ full energy intensity and the scale of import,export embodied energy. The results show that: as time goes on,China’s various departments fully energy intensity is in a downward trend,shows that China’s energy has improved.Meanwhile,China’s import and export embodied energy scale shows a trend of rising.Among them,there is quite different between the embodied energy scale based on the assumption of thchnical homogeneity and the scale based on Japan’s energy intensity.China’s embodied energy net results implicit that the result based on the assumption of thchnical is difficult to judge whether our country belongs to embodied energy net exporter or embodied energy net importer.But the result based on Japan’s energy intensity shows that China is obviously a embodied energy net export er.Then according to the measurement of China’s trade embodied energy scale,by the input-output structure decomposition model(I-O SDA),analyze the driving factors influencing the transfer energy consumption of our country depended on the comparative analysis of scale effect,structure effect and technology effect.Empirical show that between 1997 and 2012,trade scale factor has played the most important positive role in promoting both import and export embodied energy scale.Within 15 years the promote value of respective export trade energy and import trade-embodied energy reached 81324 tons of standard coal and 105278 tons of standard coal.The average contribution rate is around 200%.In contrast,the trade structure factor impact on the import and export trade-embodied energy is very small.On the other hand,energy efficiency improvement can inhibit the energy consumption transfer in a certain extent. Technology factor plays the main inhibitory effect on the growth of China’s trade-embodied energy.Finally, based on the measurement of China’s trade-embodied energy and the analysis of it’s driving factors,and combine with actual situation of the economy and trade development,put forward effective trade transformation measures that aim at scale effect,structure effect and technology effect.