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China produced 49.2% of the world’s total steel production in 2017. From 1990 to 2017, the world’s total steel production increased by 850 Mt, of which 87% came from China. After 30 years of rapid expansion, China’s steel industry is not expected to increase its production in the medium and long term. In fact, the industry is currently in the stage of industrial restructuring, and great changes will arise in production structure and technical level to solve pressing issues, such as overcapacity, high energy intensity (EI), and carbon emission. These changes will directly affect the global energy consumption and carbon emissions. Thus, a review of China’s steel industry is necessary to introduce its current situation and development plan. Therefore, this paper presents an overview of the Chinese steel industry, and factors involved include steel production, production structure, energy consumption, technical level, EI, carbon emission, scrap consumption, etc. In addition, four determinants are analyzed to explain the EI gap between China and the world’s advanced level. In addition, comparison of steel industries between China and the world, development plans for energy savings, and emission reduction are also included in this paper to give readers a clear understanding of China’s steel industry.

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The energy consumption of China's steel industry accounted for 53% of the global steel industry energy consumption in 2014. This paper aims to analyze the energy saving potential of China's steel industry, according to its development plan of the next decade, and find the key of energy conservation. A multivariate energy intensity (MEI) model is developed for energy saving potential analysis based on the research on China's energy statistics indexes and methods, which is able to capture the impacts of production routes, technology progress, industrial concentration, energy structure, and electricity (proportion and generation efficiency). Different scenarios have been set to describe future policy measures in relation to the development of the iron and steel industry. Results show that an increasing scrap ratio (SR) has the greatest energy saving effect of 16.8% when compared with 2014, and the maximum energy saving potential reaches 23.7% after counting other factors. When considering coal consumption of power generation, the energy saving effect of increasing SR drops to 7.9%, due to the increase on the proportion of electricity in total energy consumption, and the maximum energy saving potential is 15.5%, and they can increase to 10.1% and 17.5%, respectively, with improving China's power generation technology level.Energies 2018, 11, 948 2 of 16The advantages of BU models are the disadvantages of TD models and vice versa. Due to disciplinary and structural differences, these two types of models cannot demonstrate wide ranges of future projection of energy trajectories at both the macroscopic and technical levels. Ref.[10] tried to complement each type model's advantages and disadvantages by exchanging information between a detailed BU model with simplified macroeconomic module; Proença and Aubyn [11] integrated TD and BU models by representing detailed energy technologies within the TD framework; Fujimori etc. Ref.[12] developed an Integrated Assessment Models (IAM)/computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that was integrating detailed energy end-use technologies.These studies focused on coupling existing models without exploring the calculation approach or EI impact factors of the steel industry besides existing ones. According to the development plan issued by the Chinese government in recent years, the production situation of China's steel industry will change significantly by in next decade, including both macro and technical impact factors, such as raw materials, production routes, technology progress, industrial concentration, energy structure, and electricity (proportion in energy consumption and generation efficiency). However, using existing models in early studies cannot comprehensively analyze the future energy consumption trends of China's steel industry, as no existing models are able to capture the influence of all these factors. Furthermore, the energy statistics system are the basis of energy related analysis and research, and data calculated according to their definition and statistical met...