title: Emergy-based comparative analysis of energy intensity in different industrial systems.
abstract: With the rapid economic development, energy consumption of China has been the second place in the world next to the USA. Usually, measuring energy consumption intensity or efficiency applies heat unit which is joule per gross domestic production (GDP) or coal equivalent per GDP. However, this measuring approach is only oriented by the conversion coefficient of heat combustion which does not match the real value of the materials during their formation in the ecological system. This study applied emergy analysis to evaluate the energy consumption intensity to fill this gap. Emergy analysis is considered as a bridge between ecological system and economic system, which can evaluate the contribution of ecological products and services as well as the load placed on environmental systems. In this study, emergy indicator for performing energy consumption intensity of primary energy was proposed. Industrial production is assumed as the main contributor of energy consumption compared to primary and tertiary industries. Therefore, this study validated this method by investigating the two industrial case studies which were Dalian Economic Development Area (DEDA) and Fuzhou economic and technological area (FETA), to comparatively study on their energy consumption intensity between the different kinds of industrial systems and investigate the reasons behind the differences. The results show that primary energy consumption (PEC) of DEDA was much higher than that of FETA during 2006 to 2010 and its primary energy consumption ratio (PECR) to total emergy involvement had a dramatically decline from year 2006 to 2010. In the same time, nonrenewable energy of PEC in DEDA was also much higher than that in FETA. The reason was that industrial structure of DEDA was mainly formed by heavy industries like petro-chemistry industry, manufacturing industries, and high energy-intensive industries. However, FETA was formed by electronic business, food industry, and light industries. Although the GDP of DEDA was much higher than that of FETA, its energy intensity was higher as well. Through the 5-year development, energy consumption intensity in DEDA made a significant reduction from 3.90E+16 seJ/$ to 1.84E+16 seJ/$, which was attributed by the improvement of industrial structure, construction of eco-industrial park and circular economic industrial park. The proposed emergy indicator for demonstrating energy consumption intensity overcame the weakness that the indicator was only transformed from the heat burning. Therefore, this study shows an optional way to measure energy consumption intensity from the perspective of material ecological contribution.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Pollution Ecology and Environment Engineering, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, People's Republic of China. liuzhe@iae.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Zhe
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Pollution Ecology and Environment Engineering, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, People's Republic of China. ygeng@sjtu.edu.cn.|School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, People's Republic of China. ygeng@sjtu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Geng
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Regional Environmental and Eco-Remediation, Ministry of Education, Shenyang University, Shenyang, 110044, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Environmental Studies, 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8506, Japan.
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, 5-53-70 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, 150-8925, Japan.
authors.forename: Zhixiao
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Pollution Ecology and Environment Engineering, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, People's Republic of China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Pollution Ecology and Environment Engineering, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, People's Republic of China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xiaoman
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yu
mesh_terms: D002681:China; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D004463:Ecology; D057217:Economic Development; D017753:Ecosystem; D059066:Gross Domestic Product; D007221:Industry / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
keywords: Emergy analysis; Energy intensity; Industrial park; Primary energy