INDUSTRIAL GROWTH AND CHANGE OF ENERGY CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOUR IN EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES, AUSTRIA AND CHINA

The present study is a comparative analysis of the energy consumption and industrial growth in China and Eastern European Countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and Poland). It was considered the energy consumption, the usage of green energy and the emission of Greenhouse gases (GHGs). The industrial studied sectors were Manufacture, Mining and Supply by the relation of the green energy and GHGs, and the relationship between industry growth and energy consumption was analysed using the Hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA). The results highlighted that in China the Manufacture Industry (MaI) was not affected by the energy change, it continued to grow at a high speed after technological change. At the same time an industrial structure change took place with the restructuring in energy consumption and the increase of the renewable or green energy. The industrial growth and the switch to new types of energy had a consistent contribution to the reduction of GHGs. It is supposed that the sustainable industrial growth required the change of energy-consumption structure in Chinese economic policy. In Eastern Europe, the requirement of green energy development and the evolution of energy-consumption structure in most countries were similar to those in China. On the other hand, high green energy consumption in Austria provided a new way on industrial growth, which suggested the transformation of industrial structure could be improved by the development of green energy. The current work suggests a tendency of the high green energy consumption driving industry growth for Eastern European countries as well as China.