Relationships between the Energy Consumption Structure and Energy Security in China

Needs for energy security and impacts of the energy consumption structure are two major challenges in the 21st century.According to the International Energy Agency's(IEA) definition,there are two main parts of energy security:supply security and usage security.Supply security means a stable supply of required energy,while usage security means an environmental friendly usage of energy.Since 1980,China has launched a lot of programs to ensure the energy security,but it is still severe.Meanwhile,there are a series of problems regarding the energy consumption structure.First,the extremely high dependence(over 50%)on imported oil makes China quite vulnerable to oil crisis.Oil consumption became a critical issue for China's energy supply security.Second,coal is considered the most severe energy contaminant to the environment,but it is the largest energy resource used in China.Extensive use of coal has resulted in significant negative impacts on China's energy usage security.In the context,renewable energy tends to be a good choice for enhancing the country's energy security,but not all kinds of renewable energy resources are suitable for China.In one word,the energy security situation is still not optimistic in China largely because of unreasonable energy consumption structure.There are rarely empirical studies on the relationship between the energy consumption structure and energy security in the literature.To bridge the gap,this paper aims to develop a regression method to explain this relationship using data associated with energy consumption structures and energy security indices during the period from 1980 to 2007.The energy consumption structure is based upon the energy from a variety of sources(e.g.,coal,oil,natural gas,nuclear-electricity,hydro-electricity energy,and other renewable energy sources),while the energy security indices take into account various factors(e.g.,energy production,net imports,self-sufficiency,energy intensity,carbon intensity,energy-carbon intensity,and carbon footprint).Conclusions are drawn as follows.First,the contribution of the energy consumption structure of renewable resources is far greater than that of traditional resources.In order to increase the grade of energy security by 2%,we only need to increase 0.13%hydro-electricity energy consumption but have to decrease 5%coal consumption.Second,the situation of energy security in China since 1980 can generally be divided into two phases:from 1980 to 1997 when the score of energy security declined,and from 1997 to 2007 when it increased.This demonstrates that during the second phase under investigation,China's energy security situation was improved.Such improvements could be attributed to increasing attention to energy security from the government and the people.Third,the energy security situation in China is still grim.Although the energy security situation is now being incrementally improved,it has not reached the level in the year 1980.If we placed more emphasis on the usage security,the situation would be worse.Compared with supply security,the usage security has turned out to be the key factor for China's energy security.As such,it is crucial to taking actions to effectively alleviating the negative impacts of energy usage on the environment.Several policy recommendations,for example,increasing investment in developing renewable energy resources,accelerating adjustment of the energy consumption structure,advocating energy conservation and reducing carbon emissions are given.