Temporal trends and spatial patterns of energy use efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions in crop production of Anhui Province, China

The aim of this study is to establish an energy use efficiency and GHG emissions (EUE-GHG) model to promote ecological agriculture, not only examining these indicators on crop production in Anhui Province from 1990 to 2014, but also comparing them among 16 provincial cities in 2014. The results reveal that energy use efficiency decreased significantly from 3.75 to 1.87 during 1990-2005, and then increased to 2.08 in 2014, while the GHG emissions increased rapidly from 2919.51 CO2-eq in 1990-8993.46 CO2-eq in 2014. These two important indicators were mainly determined by the great energy consumption from the use of agricultural machines and the use of chemical fertilizers. Regard to spatial perspective, the central and northern cities, including Fuyang, Bengbu, Suzhou, Huaibei, and Hefei, had the smaller EUEs and the higher GHG emissions than those in the southern cities, due to their large consumption of agricultural resources and the economic reasons. Several mitigation policies are then proposed by considering the local realities so that valuable policy insights can be shared by the stakeholders in other Chinese regions.