Is China’s Energy Supply Sustainable? New Research Model Based on the Exponential Smoothing and GM(1,1) Methods

Energy supply sustainability is an important issue in the field of energy security. To successfully achieve the goals of sustainable economic and social development and to implement the “Paris Agreement”, we need to accurately evaluate and predict the energy supply sustainability of countries or regions. However, it is very difficult to evaluate and predict energy supply sustainability, because it belongs to a complex multi-attribute decision-making problem. This paper proffered a new definition of the energy supply sustainability in China and put forward sixteen indicators for it from the four dimensions of energy availability, economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and technical sustainability. First, the energy supply sustainability index (ESSI) was quantified by a comprehensive evaluation method. Secondly, based on the exponential smoothing and GM(1,1) prediction models, two ideas were put forward to predict the sustainable level of China’s energy supply, enriching the theoretical study of energy security prediction. The study found that: (1) China’s energy supply sustainability index changes dynamically; it has an asymmetric “W” trend from 2000 to 2016. The energy supply sustainability level of China is low; it cannot satisfy the Chinese people’s need for high-quality eco-energy products or the needs of social sustainable development. The three indicators of reserve and production ratio, production diversity and clean power generation are very important to China’s energy supply sustainability. (2) Referring to the accuracy criteria, the Mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of the Exponential smoothing-GM(1,1) hybrid model for forecasting China’s energy supply sustainability is only 2%, and the Root mean square error (RMSE) is 0.0278; therefore, it is suitable for use in the forecasting of the energy supply sustainability level in China. (3) In the short term, from 2017 to 2020, many unsustainable factors remain within China’s energy supply, and the sustainable level is level II. In the long term, the sustainable level of China’s energy supply will be greatly improved and will increase to 0.8765 by 2030, attaining a sustainable level. However, China remains far behind other countries, with high levels of energy sustainability and energy security in the world.