Brockway, PE orcid.org/0000-0001-6925-8040, Steinberger, JK orcid.org/0000-0002-5925-9602, Barrett, JR orcid.org/0000-0002-4285-6849 et al. (1 more author) (2015) Understanding China’s past and future energy demand: an exergy efficiency and decomposition analysis. Applied Energy, 155. pp. 892-903. ISSN 1872-9118
Abstract
There are very few useful work and exergy analysis studies for China, and fewer still that consider how the results inform drivers of past and future energy consumption. This is surprising: China is the world’s largest energy consumer, whilst exergy analysis provides a robust thermodynamic framework for analysing the technical efficiency of energy use. In response, we develop three novel sub-analyses. First we perform a long-term whole economy time-series exergy analysis for China (1971-2010). We find a 10-fold growth in China’s useful work since 1971, which is supplied by a 4-fold increase in primary energy coupled to a 2.5-fold gain in aggregate exergy conversion efficiency to useful work: from 5% to 12%. Second, using index decomposition we expose the key driver of efficiency growth as not ‘technological leapfrogging’ but structural change: i.e. increasing reliance on thermodynamically efficient (but very energy intensive) heavy industrial activities. Third, we extend our useful work analysis to estimate China’s future primary energy demand, and find values for 2030 that are significantly above mainstream projections.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | energy efficiency; energy demand; decomposition; China; useful work; exergy |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 13 Jul 2015 12:03 |
Last Modified: | 19 Mar 2019 16:14 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.05.082 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.05.082 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:87869 |
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