Macroeconomic efficiency of use of non-renewable resources in the industrial economy during a period of rapid economic growth in China

The efficiency of using non-renewable resources is an important indicator for assessing sustainable development performance. At present, Chinese national statistical data on this efficiency is deficient in every area of non-renewable resource use, including extraction, manufacturing, consumption, and recovery of waste material. In the present study, we constructed an alternative macroeconomic indicator that represents the ratio of total industrial value added to non-renewable resources input in the industrial economy, and examined trends for this indicator from 1985 to 2001. The input of non-renewable resources in the industrial sector was calculated using both mass and emergy units. The results indicate that the trends for the indicators during the study period were similar for the indicator expressed in mass and emergy units. Compared with 1985, non-renewable resources use efficiency in 2001 increased by 215.8% in mass units, versus 214.3% in emergy units. The average annual (not compounded) increase was 12.7% in mass units and 12.6% in emergy units. The increase in resource use efficiency demonstrates that economic growth was faster than the growth in consumption of non-renewable resources in China during the past 17 years, and that economic growth was accompanied by more efficient use of non-renewable resources. Of course, the continuous increase in the input of non-renewable resources during this period is producing huge environmental pressures for China that are not measured by the indicator developed in this paper, and reliable statistics on extraction, manufacturing, consumption, and recovery of waste material must be obtained in the future to permit more refined analyses.