Analysis of the Influence Factors of the Primary Energy Consumption Structure under the Target of Low-Carbon Economy
低碳经济目标下一次能源消费结构影响因素分析

In contrast to high-carbon economy, low-carbon economy is characterized by low consumption, low emissions and low pollution, so it is the most sustainable economic development model, the essence of which is changing energy use, improving energy efficiency and optimizing the energy structure through technological progress and institutional innovation. Optimization of energy structure is the key to low-carbon economy. In this paper, we summarized the main influence factors of primary energy consumption structure by reviewing the document records. The factors include energy consumption constraint, carbon emissions constraint, total population, industrial structure and GDP. At the same time, we calculated the total, direct as well as indirect impacts of each influence factor on the energy consumption structure by path analysis and then got the influence mechanism. The results indicate that energy consumption constraint and GDP growth are the main driving factors for the optimization of energy structure. However, with the extensive economic growth, low-level production technology, strong dependence on energy consumption, the carbon emissions constraint and GDP growth have inhibition effect on the optimization of energy consumption structure when the carbon intensity and energy consumption intensity remain unchanged. Based on this, the paper has constructed a predictive model of primary energy consumption structure by eliminating the multicollinearity of each factor with ridge regression method. By analyzing the government’s expectation of energy consumption constraint (3.498~5.246 billion tce), total population (1.45 billion) and GDP (19230 billion yuan) in 2020, we got the conclusion that energy consumption and carbon emission should be reduced with the growth of GDP and the proportion of coal consumption should be reduced to 65.99%~66.72% to achieve the goal of low-carbon economy in 2020. Therefore, improvement of energy efficiency is of great necessarity. On the one hand, we need to accelerate the transition of economic growth to the development mode of low-carbon economy, attach great importance to high-tech industries and upgrade the economic structure and industrial structure; on the other hand, we should increase the proportion of high value-added industries, pay attention to intellectual property rights and foster well-known brands.