Linkage analysis for the water–energy nexus of city

Delin Fang and Bin Chen

Applied Energy, 2017, vol. 189, issue C, 770-779

Abstract: Rapid urbanization and the expansion of metropolitan areas have resulted in severe demands on water and energy resources, which threaten the sustainability of the urban economy and environment. In this paper, an input–output model and linkage analysis are used to detect the synergetic effects of water and energy consumption and interactions among economic sectors. Beijing is chosen as a case study to investigate the water–energy nexus and the water and energy importing and exporting functions of major economic sectors. The results reveal that the agriculture and food processing sectors are major virtual water suppliers, while petroleum and natural gas processing, and electricity production sectors are major embodied energy suppliers. These energy suppliers mainly import intermediate products to satisfy the final demand of Beijing, thus transferring resources pressure to other regions. With rapid urbanization, the real estate industry sector chain has become an important water–energy nexus node and resources transfer node. The real estate sector needs large amounts of virtual water and embodied energy resource inputs to continue its production and thereby promote the growth of logistical industries. The transportation sector was also found to be important energy consumer and energy transfer node. In addition, the services sector, contributing one fourth of Beijing’s total GDP, is a key water–energy nexus node because it consumes considerable amounts of both virtual water and embodied energy resources to support its production pattern.

Keywords: Water–energy nexus; Linkage analysis; Beijing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261916304706
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:189:y:2017:i:c:p:770-779

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2016.04.020

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().