Analysis of Beijing’s Energy Intensity Changes Based on an Input–Output Structural Decomposition Model from 2007 to 2020

As China’s capital and a global megacity, Beijing has experienced sustained and rigid growth in energy demand driven by rapid population and economic expansion, rendering the analysis of energy intensity critically imperative for optimizing its energy system, alleviating resource and environmental pressures, and advancing toward carbon neutrality. By constructing a long-term comparable-price series, this study applies multi-period comparative structural decomposition analysis (SDA) across five benchmark years, spanning major policy cycles. It disaggregates changes in energy intensity into energy technology, production technology, and final demand structure effects across six sectors and five energy categories. The principal findings are threefold. First, Beijing’s aggregate energy intensity exhibited a consistent downward trajectory, declining from 0.33699 tons of standard coal equivalent (tce) per 10,000 yuan in 2007 to 0.16393 tce per 10,000 yuan in 2020 (at constant 2012 prices). Second, the direct, indirect, and total energy consumption coefficients for all six sectors exhibited a broadly downward trend, with the largest reduction in the freight and postal sector, followed by industry. Third, energy technology change was the predominant driver of the decline in both aggregate energy intensity and consumption intensity across the five energy categories. Production technology and final demand structure changes exhibited heterogeneous effects across sectors and sub-periods. These findings provide policy-relevant insights for optimizing Beijing’s energy structure, and several targeted recommendations are proposed.