Investigation of the 60-year relationship between energy consumption and environmental quality in China

The production and consumption of energy are important driving forces for the economic and social development of a country, and environmental pollution caused by the consumption of energy especially for traditional energy has become a global focus in recent years. This paper analyzes the progress of energy production and consumption in China from 1957 to 2017 and characterizes the correlation between energy consumption and environmental pollution in China. Statistical methods, such as fit regression and gray relevance based on distance, are employed to describe their relations. It is shown that the total amount of energy production and consumption in China has steadily risen. Energy consumption has a strong link with environmental pollution, as demonstrated by its high correlations with the emission of waste gas and the generation of solid waste. The corresponding determination coefficients are 0.99 and 0.98, respectively. The results of the distance-based gray relevancy analysis indicate that, among all the correlations between different industrial wastes, the relation between discharged industrial solid waste and coal combustion is the largest (R = 0.79), while the relation between industrial solid waste and crude oil consumption is the smallest (R = 0.50). Compared to the other two wastes of the industry, energy consumption has the most impact on industrial wastewater, of which the average correlation coefficient is 0.61. The influence of coal combustion on environmental quality is the largest among the various energy consumption activities, with an average correlation coefficient of 0.76. Finally, the paper uses case analysis of remote sensing monitoring for environmental pollution to further discuss environmental problems. This study can provide necessary support for optimizing the domestic structure of energy consumption to further reduce pollution and improve environmental quality in China.