**5. Conclusions and Policy Implication**

The main conclusions are summarized as follows:

Between 2007 and 2012, technology changes affected fossil energy consumption in China in three aspects. The energy input level effect was the most influential factor offsetting the primary fossil energy growth, by 1205 Mtce, in China. Unfortunately, although the energy composition effect saved 79 Mtce of oil, it promoted coal and natural gas growth by 198 and 12 Mtce, respectively, ultimately resulting in an energy growth of 131 Mtce. The non-energy input effect indirectly caused the fossil energy consumption to increase by 389 Mtce.

The role of the energy input level effect was in opposition to the energy composition and non-energy input effects in most sectors. The energy input level effects of electricity, metallurgy, and the chemical industry stood out the most at −936 Mtce in total, but the noteworthy energy composition effects and non-energy input effects of the three sectors weakened the energy input level effect, triggering a fossil energy growth of 194 Mtce.

The other main sources of energy growth were as follows. For the energy input level effect, coal mining, coking products, and petroleum refining were the primary source sectors promoting energy growth, by 243 Mtce overall. For the non-energy input effect, construction, coal mining, and electronic equipment generated energy growths of 198 Mtce overall.

We sugges<sup>t</sup> that the energy growth of the important stakeholder sectors identified in this study should be given a higher priority of attention by policy makers.

Given the tougher climate challenges facing all countries, we propose the following policy, based on our analysis, for further energy conservation in China. The energy inputs of the contributors listed in Table 1 should be the main monitoring points for energy saving. Annual reports for the main monitoring points should be compiled by the relevant governments. We also sugges<sup>t</sup> that this contributors list be updated every five years for dynamic monitoring of the major sources of energy growth related to technology change. Therefore, the focus of technology improvement for further fossil energy saving should always be clear.


**Table 1.** Main energy growth sources by sector and by province related to technology effects.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/4/699/s1, Table S1: Results of industrial sectors classification, Table S2: Energy grouping, Table S3: Price deflaters for sectors, Table S4: Abbreviation of each province, method S1: Decomposition of the changes in the imported energy of China during 2007 to 2012, method S2: Constructing hybrid MRIO tables of China.

**Author Contributions:** S.K. and Y.H. designed the research and developed the method. Y.H. and F.N. analyzed the data. Y.H. wrote the manuscript with inputs from all authors.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Grant-in-Aid for Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) [16H01797].

**Acknowledgments:** We are grateful to the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. We also sincerely appreciate the support from the China Scholarship Council. All errors are our own.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
