Estimating energy conservation potential in China’s energy intensive industries with rebound effect

Abstract The energy consumption of China’s six most energy-intensive sub-industries is about half of the total national energy consumption, and accounts for more than 70% of industrial energy consumption in recent years. These six industries are capital and energy intensive and have a great impact on the energy consumption of China, so they are directly related to the achievement of the energy conservation goal in the 13th Five Year Plan. This paper investigates the influential factors of energy consumption in the industries by employing the cointegration method, and estimates the possible energy conservation potential considering energy rebound effect. The results show that GDP and the scale of industries are the deterministic factors increasing energy consumption, while R&D intensity decreases it. Energy price has little impact on energy consumption. The average energy rebound effect is calculated using the latent variable approach and the result is 90.75%. Considering energy rebound effect, the energy conservation potential of China’s energy intensive industries is 14.18–26.54 million tons of standard coal equivalent in 2020 and 44.64–80.72 million tons of standard coal equivalent in 2030.