Chinese Environmental Regulation and Energy Consumption: 1998~2012

Environmental regulation’s intensity usually affected the energy consumption. Based on the annual data from 1998 to 2012 as the sample interval, this paper carries out the empirical analysis about the effect of economic growth and Chinese environmental regulation’s intensity on the energy consumption, the research results show that the economic growth is the main factor in promoting the growth of energy consumption, and environmental regulation does not obviously inhibit the growth of energy consumption. So in order to improve the environment, China should moderately strengthen environmental regulation.