Forecasting energy consumption in China following instigation of an energy-saving policy

China is in a key stage of industrialization and urbanization, which brings a high economic growth rate accompanied by high energy consumption. To alleviate the unsustainable demand for energy consumption, China’s government has instigated an energy-saving policy to decrease energy consumption per unit gross domestic product (GDP) so as to improve energy efficiency. Based on analysing historical trends of energy consumption and GDP, we have applied an optimized single-variable discrete grey forecasting model [OSDGM (1, 1)] to measure the instigation effects of the energy-saving policy and forecast whether the planned reduction rate of energy consumption per unit GDP in the implementation stage could be accomplished or not. The results illustrate that China’s government has made major progress on energy saving even though the task is tough in the long run. The forecasting results indicate that it is difficult to accomplish the planned reduction rate of energy consumption per unit GDP at both the national and provincial levels. According to the economic growth rate of 2011 and 2012, nearly half of the provinces could not reach their planned reduction rate objectives. These conclusions are very important for China’s government both in terms of policy monitoring and development. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014