Measuring the energy consumption of China’s domestic investment from 1992 to 2007

In this study, we first define the energy consumption of domestic investment as the investment-driven energy consumption (IDEC). Then, we build an energy input–output model to identify quantitatively the amounts of China’s IDEC from 1992 to 2007. We also use the model to analyze the sector distributions of the IDEC for the same time period. The key findings derived from this study improve the understanding of the effects of China’s domestic investment on its energy consumption expansion and reflect the fact that China’s rapid urbanization and industrialization processes are among the main reasons for the large amount of energy consumption in China. We provide some quantitative information for further determining the energy-saving potentials of China’s economy during these processes.