Decoupling trends and patterns in China’s steel footprint

Steel is an essential element in modern socio-economic systems．Socio-economic development leads to great demands for steel resources, while production and consumption of steel has brought about environmental pollutions and threatened human health．Therefore, it is important to explore evolutionary characteristics of steel demand from a consumption-based perspective to understand steel consumption patterns in China．In this study multi-regional input-output model was used to estimate China’s steel footprint from 1995-2016, to analyze its evolution pattern and decoupling relationship with economic development, and impact of changing final demand structure on trends of steel footprint．From 1995-2016, China’s steel footprint was found to maintain a rapid growth trend and experience an evolutionary process from strong decoupling to expansive coupling to weak decoupling．Considering the structure of final consumption demand in 2016, investment was found to contribute 73% of the steel footprint．Household consumption was the second largest with a share of 14%．In terms of consumption categories, construction, other manufacturing, and transportation sectors triggered 98% of the steel footprint related to investment．Light industry, other manufacturing, transportation and living services dominated the steel footprint triggered about 82% by household consumption．Decoupling trends and patterns of steel footprint in China could be used to optimize steel consumption structure and promote demand-driven production in key sectors, to achieve sustainable consumption of steel for “strong decoupling”．