Energy-Saving Potential of China's Steel Industry According to Its Development Plan

The energy consumption of China's steel industry accounted for 53% of the global steel industry energy consumption in 2014. This paper aims to analyze the energy saving potential of China's steel industry, according to its development plan of the next decade, and find the key of energy conservation. A multivariate energy intensity (MEI) model is developed for energy saving potential analysis based on the research on China's energy statistics indexes and methods, which is able to capture the impacts of production routes, technology progress, industrial concentration, energy structure, and electricity (proportion and generation efficiency). Different scenarios have been set to describe future policy measures in relation to the development of the iron and steel industry. Results show that an increasing scrap ratio (SR) has the greatest energy saving effect of 16.8% when compared with 2014, and the maximum energy saving potential reaches 23.7% after counting other factors. When considering coal consumption of power generation, the energy saving effect of increasing SR drops to 7.9%, due to the increase on the proportion of electricity in total energy consumption, and the maximum energy saving potential is 15.5%, and they can increase to 10.1% and 17.5%, respectively, with improving China's power generation technology level.