Relationship between energy consumption and economic development in construction industry

Purpose - This paper aims to explain the current state of energy consumption and economic development in Beijing's construction industry and identify the relationship between the two systems so as to supply decision support for the future. Design/methodology/approach - This paper presents a design of a coordinated development model based on the theory of synergetics. The focus of the paper is on how to integrate energy consumption indices and economic development indices to determine coordinated development indices in a relevant and useful manner. While analyzing energy composite consumption and economic composite development, respectively, all the variables normalized are eliminated inter-correlated characteristics by making use of principal component analysis (PCA). Findings - Beijing's construction development is experiencing the transition from economic development hysteresis to energy consumption hysteresis. The higher coordinated development degree is predicting the energy-economy system is trending to stability in Beijing's construction industry which does not necessarily mean a perfect development trend but an upper limit of the increasing rate in energy consumption. Thus, or at least maintaining the current economic development and energy utilization policy, production specifications, or using new technology, newmethod and economic policy to stimulate the economic development, or more attention from all the stakeholders being paid to saving more energy than before, will be still priority considerations for Beijing's construction industry in the following years. Originality/value - The paper proposes an original framework for examining the relationship between energy consumption and economic development in construction industry. The framework is also capable of identifying if the growth rate in energy consumption goes beyond the upper limit.