Decoupling analysis of economic growth and mineral resources consumption in China from 1992 to 2017: A comparison between tonnage and exergy perspective

Abstract The utilization of mineral resources not only acts as one of the fundamental aspects supporting economic activities, but also leads to resource depletion and ecological environment problems. To achieve economic growth without increases in quantitative mineral resources consumption and adverse environmental effects, it is necessary to conduct a decoupling analysis combining resource decoupling and environmental impact decoupling simultaneously. This study introduces the exergoecological approach into the decoupling analysis framework to investigate the decoupling of China's economic growth from mineral resources consumption and its environmental burden. On this basis, the grey relation analysis (GRA) is adopted to explore influence factors of the decoupling index from three aspects (the technological progress, the industrial structure and the economic growth mode). The results show that: (1) the environmental burden generated by the consumption of building minerals is equivalent to the sum of non-ferrous metal minerals and salt minerals, and almost all the environmental burden of non-fuel minerals consumption comes from the above three categories; (2) the quality of mineral resources has a significant impact on the decoupling index, especially for non-fuel minerals, and the decoupling index measured in exergy replacement costs (ERC) is smaller than that calculated in tons; (3) the decoupling index of fossil fuels is most influenced by the industrial structure, followed by the technological progress and the economic growth mode, while the decoupling index of non-fuel minerals is more influenced by the technological progress and the industrial structure than the economic growth mode. Based on the research results, this study can serve as a foundation to offer decision makers relevant implications for formulation of sustainable development policies.