Energy conservation and CO2 emission reduction in China's 11th Five-Year Plan: A performance evaluation

In the 11th Five-Year Plan (FYP) (2005–2010), the Chinese Government initiated a series of energy-saving and emission reduction policies in many key fields in response to environmental pollution and climate change. This paper quantitatively evaluates the performance of energy conservation and CO2 emission reduction in this period, the impact of these policies and potentials, by integrating the contributions of energy conversion efficiency and energy utilization efficiency improvement, industrial restructuring, fuel mix shift and renewable energy development in a unified framework, as a first attempt to introduce energy conversion efficiency improvement into a decomposition approach. Comprehensive and specific policies are summarized as a policy list to be investigated. The results show that energy intensity and conversion efficiency effects were mainly responsible for driving down energy consumption, by 637.4Mtce and 85.4Mtce respectively, and they reduced CO2 emissions by 1345.3Mt and 243.8Mt respectively due to a significant improvement in the 11th FYP period. Most of the contributions made by the conversion efficiency effect (94%) come from thermal power generation, and the emission coefficient effect reduced CO2 emissions by 17.4Mt through developing renewable energy. Economic growth is still the biggest driver of energy consumption and increasing emissions, while industrial restructuring and fuel mix shift effects contributed relatively little. Developing renewable energy and promoting economic restructuring to limit the increase of energy-intensive sectors are still the main challenges and the next policy focus to achieve the targets for energy saving and carbon emission reduction in the 12th Five-Year Plan. •Energy saving and CO2 reduction in China's 11th FYP are evaluated in a unified frame.•The improvement of energy utilization efficiency contributed the most.•The improvement of energy conversion efficiency played an important role.•Industrial structural adjustment and fuel mix optimization contributed little.•Huge potentials in specific sectors and key fields are identified.