Chinese economic growth is facing increasingly serious constraint in terms of energy and environment. The nature of balancing economic growth and energy is balancing development of industry and energy.
Global industry shift is an important factor influencing global energy consumption-flow rate. Historically, global energy consumption-flow used to change amid global industry shift especially the shift of world manufacturing center. Energy consumption intensity (energy consumption per unit of GDP or value added)reached the historical peak when a country became the world manufacturing center, such as the UK, the US and Japan. Since 1990s, especially since the 21st century, given economic globalization and information technology revolution, there have been new features and trends in terms of global industry shift.An obvious characteristic is the lightweight of the industry's energy consumption,which means the industry's value added is relatively high while its energy consumption rate is relatively low in the original country or the recipient country's industry structure. Therefore, although there may be a little bit change in terms of total energy consumption in the original country or the recipient country, influences on their own energy consumption intensity would be very little.
With 30 years of reform and opening-up, as well as advantage of tremendous labor resource especially in terms of labor intensity industry and high-tech industry's labor intensity sector,China has been an active recipient country for global industry shift and has embedded deeply in the global value chain.According to relevant studies,with the annual growth rate of 18.2%, China's industry's energy consumption of FDI (Foreign Direct Investment)was33.5million tons of standard coal per thousand RMB in2006,which was over two times of the amount in 2001 (14.5 million tons of standard coal per thousand RMB).With FDI as the vehicle,global industry shift increased the total amount of China's industrial energy consumption(average annual growth of3.8million tons of standard coal thousand RMB), which however did not increase China's industrial energy consumption intensity. In 2006, FDI industry's energy consumption per unit of value added was 1.57 tons of standard coal/ten thousand RMB(based on2000constant price,same as below), which not only was lower than China's industrial energy consumption per unit of value added(2.31tons of standard coal/ten thousand RMB)at the same period,but also lower than China's industrial energy consumption per unit of value added(2.03tons of standard coal/ten thousand RMB)in2001.According to relevant studies,in2006,China's export products'energy consumption was 251 million tons of standard coal, which was just ten percent of China's total energy consumption but helped produce a significant export amount(contributed to about one third of China's GDP).Overall,global industry shift did play an important role in adjusting and balancing China's industrial energy consumption structure and controlling China's industrial energy consumption intensity.
China should proactively adopt the“opening-up and energy conservation”strategy. By further opening-up,China should appropriately use the opportunity of global industry shift, conducting industrial energy conservation by according to two value added directions of capital-technology intensity and info-management intensity in the global value chain.With limited energy consumption,China should promote balancing and sustainable development of industry and energy by significantly increasing industry value added.