Role of renewable energy in China’s energy security and climate change mitigation: An index decomposition analysis

Abstract Renewable energy is an efficient tool to support China's endeavors to keep energy independence and mitigate climate change. This paper applies a Divisia index approach to investigate the factors governing renewable energy development in China, including the supply mix, energy security, carbon emission, and to forecast these requirements for the year 2020 and 2030. Grey relational model is employed to verify the relationships between renewable energy and its drivers. The results of the forecasts reveal the challenges of long-term deployment for renewable energy technologies. Other results show that during the research period, energy security makes a major contribution to renewable energy development. Energy security and substitution rate have relatively closer relationships with new and total renewable energy consumption respectively than that of other factors. Scenario analyses suggest that strong and continuing renewable energy policies will be helpful to achieve sustainable energy development in China and a strong synergy between renewable energy and energy security would emerge in the future.