Sustainability analysis of SEEA indicators for non-renewable resources

Despite the fact that the non-renewable resources industry contributes greatly to regional and national gross domestic product (GDP), it casts massive negative impacts on the environment, which fails to be deducted from economic growth. Hence, sustainable development of non-renewable resources (extraction and processing) is playing an essential role in boosting economic growth continuously. The System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA) proposed by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) provides a brand-new perspective for sustainability study. This paper designs a fundamental approach of green accounting for non-renewable resources based on SEEA. Three main aspects of the accounting are extracted to explore the way of analysis for sustainability indicators, which are not touched upon by SEEA. Main analyses are as follows: (1) the analysis on the influence of the change of the discount rate in user cost (UC); (2) correlation analysis between environmental degradation and pollutants emission intensity; (3) analysis of the accounting results of green GDP and green GCF (gross capital formation). Then taking petroleum resources in Shandong Province as an example, this paper will calculate and analyze green data based on the accounting and analytical approaches discussed above. However, sustainability indicators studied in the paper are just associated with past economic activities, while investigation into the factors of the change of sustainability indicators is the one most critical point in relevant policy-making.