Empirical research on the relationship between energy consumption and environmental quality in Beijing

The rapid increase in economy and improvement in living standard of households in China require more increased input of energy, while increased energy consumption results in severe environment pollution, which in turn affects environmental quality and economic development. Using grey relevancy analysis and these data about consumption of energy and environment quality from Beijing, we studied the relationship between energy consumption and environmental quality. These results showed that consumptions of fuel oil, coke and coal led to more severe pollution than those of natural gas, kerosene and diesel oil. Among all these factors, consumption of natural gas had the weakest contribution to environmental pollution. On the base of the results, we gave suggestions about how to adjust the structure of energy consumption and how to improve environmental quality in Beijing.