Energy Efficiency and Economic Development in China

Shujie Yao (), Dan Luo () and Tyler Rooker ()
Additional contact information
Shujie Yao: School of Contemporary Chinese Studies (SCCS) University of Nottingham, UK and Xi'an Jiaotong University Xi'an, China
Dan Luo: School of Contemporary Chinese Studies (SCCS) University of Nottingham, UK
Tyler Rooker: School of Contemporary Chinese Studies (SCCS) University of Nottingham, UK

Asian Economic Papers, 2012, vol. 11, issue 2, 99-117

Abstract: China is now the world's second largest economy, and it is expected to overtake the United States to become the largest by 2020. What are the implications for the global environment and climate change if China surpasses the United States? There are major concerns with China's rapid rise because its economic and industrial structure is increasingly dependent on the consumption of energy, raw materials, and electricity. In 2010, China's GDP was approximately 40 percent of the United States' GDP, yet it was the world's largest polluter and the biggest consumer of energy and electricity. This implies that the energy efficiency of the Chinese economy measured by energy consumption per unit of GDP is about one-third of that of the United States and one-fourth that of the EU and Japan. If the Chinese economy continues to grow as fast as it has in the past, without changing its structure and improving energy efficiency, China's growth will cause severe damage to the global environment. This paper analyzes the evolution of energy efficiency in the Chinese economy and stresses the importance of transforming China's economic structure. © 2012 The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Keywords: energy efficiency; sustainable development; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q01 Q41 Q43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ASEP_a_00147 link to full text PDF (application/pdf)

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:tpr:asiaec:v:11:y:2012:i:2:p:99-117

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1535-3516

Access Statistics for this article

Asian Economic Papers is currently edited by Wing Thye Woo, Sungbae An, Fukunari Kimura and Ming Lu

More articles in Asian Economic Papers from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().