مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

China’s total energy consumption is rising as a result of rapid economic growth. In 2013, China’s energy consumption was 3.75 billion tons of standard coal, accounting for 22.4% of global consumption (BP, 2013). According to International Energy Agency forecasts, China’s energy consumption is expected to grow in the coming decades. Coal is the most important energy source in China, and environmental pollution caused by coal consumption creates challenges for sustainable development. Improving energy efficiency helps address this problem, and many studies have focused on estimating energy efficiency (Zhou et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2013a, 2013b; Zhang and Xie, 2015). However, optimizing the energy consumption structure is also needed to save energy and reduce emissions to target levels. China must implement new energy alternatives to reduce its dependency on coal and other fossil fuels and meet growing energy demands.

China’s central government acknowledges the importance of developing new energy sources, and has launched supportive policies in response. The 12th Five-Year Plan proposed that renewable energy, such as wind energy, solar energy, nuclear energy account for 11.4% of total primary energy consumption by 2015. By 2020, the goal is to have 15% of total energy consumption come from non-fossil energy sources. The new energy industry is an emerging industry of great strategic importance in China; it is greatly supported by the government and there has been an increase in the installed capacity of new energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, and other new energies.

Unfortunately, however, China’s new energy enterprises have weak research and development (R&D) capabilities; and R&D investment is less than 20% of the international average (The Economic Observer, 2015). This leads to insufficient new core technology, and an inability for new energy enterprises to generate sufficient revenue from innovative products. In recent years, China’s excess production capacity has become particularly obvious. Exporting new energy equipment and components has also been very difficult, in part due to global economic downturns and protectionist policies in developed countries.