Strategies for addressing climate change on the industrial level: affecting factors to CO2 emissions of energy-intensive industries in China

This paper explores China’s strategies for addressing climate change on the industrial level. Focusing on six energy-intensive industries, this paper applies gray relational analysis theory to the affecting factors to CO2 emissions of each industry after calculating each industry’s CO2 emissions during 2001–2010. Further research based on GM(1, 1) model is conducted to forecast the trend of the factors, the energy consumption and each industry’s CO2 emissions during the 12th Five-Year Plan period. As a breakthrough in previous conclusions, energy consumption structure was divided into the respective proportion of coal, oil, natural gas and electricity in the primary energy consumption, with which industrial output and energy intensity are combined to analyze each of their impacts on the energy-intensive industries. It turns out that all the factors’ impacts on emissions of the six major energy-intensive industries are significant, despite their differentiated extents. It is worth noting that, contrary to previous findings, industrial output is not the leading affecting factor to CO2 emissions of the energy-intensive industries compared with the proportion of coal and electricity in the primary energy consumption. The GM(1, 1) forecast results of energy consumption and CO2 emissions by the end of 2015 show that coal and electricity will remain a large proportion in primary energy consumption. This research may shed some light on China’s adjustment of energy structure under the pressure of addressing climate change and hence provide decision support for the acceleration of renewable energy utilization in the industrial departments.