Embodied energy-based ecological network analysis on growth and development of the national industrial system: An empirical study in Australia

The issue of sustainable energy consumption in the socio-economic system has been widely investigated in recent studies. Embodied energy transfer is also part of the normal economic pattern. To evaluate the sustainability of a system, it is important to consider not only the growth of the system as an indicator, but also the development of the system's structure. Growth and development are two phenomena that need to be quantitively measured because these phenomena closely reflect sustainability. However, little research has studied the effects of sectoral level on growth and development. This research addresses growth and development from a network perspective in order to assess the sectoral effects on system characteristics by using information-based ecological network analysis (IENA) and a hypothetical embodied energy network model. In this study, taking the Australian industrial system as an example, Australian national input–output data and industrial consumption data are used to establish the embodied energy network based on Australian industries. The research constructs an embodied energy cycle network with seven major industries and uses a hypothetical extraction method to establish a hypothesis network for each sector. Then the research compares the hypothetical networks with the original embodied energy network. The differences represent the sectoral effects on the growth and development of the embodied energy network. By using the IENA method with the hypothetical network model, the contribution of a single specific sector can be quantified. Analytical results reveal that the sectoral increases in the volume of the network do not reflect system sustainability, while system sustainability improvement requires sectoral contributions not only to system volume but also to an increase in network organization. The research develops a sectoral-level model to identify the key drivers in the identified system from the network perspective. The results show the sectors with high levels of self-embodied energy flows make high contributions to the improvement of system sustainability in the Australian embodied energy network.