Dynamic causal relationships between energy consumption and SO2 emissions in Jiangsu, China

Jiangsu Province, with high energy consumption, has showed an upward trend in SO2 emissions between 1985 and 2007. To quantify the dynamic causal relationships among SO2 emissions and some energy consumption indicators in Jiangsu, such as the total energy consumption, energy structure and energy efficiency, Vector Auto-regression (VAR) Models are established, and impulse response function (IRF) as well as variance decomposition are adopted to describe the dynamic processes of the above energy consumption factors influencing SO2 emission and their dynamic interactions. The results and their policy implications are as follows: (1)industrial SO2 emissions will make a fluctuant and gradually weakening response to the changes of energy consumption factors; (2)the evolution of industrial SO2 emissions mainly results from its dynamic interaction with the total energy consumption and energy structure; (3) the growth control of energy consumption could help reduce the total SO2 generation; (4) in the short term, the promotion of energy efficiency could benefit the growth control of energy consumption, as well as the reduction of generation rate of SO2; in the long term, Jiangsu energy structure should be greatly changed, that is, more and more clean and renewable energy are used instead of fossil fuel, in order to arouse the long-acting effect of energy structure change on the reduction of SO2 emissions.