Abstract: With the rapid development of China's economy, two conflicting problems arise, i.e., increase of energy consumption and shortage of energyresources. Energy intensity, measured as energy use per unit of output,can well reflect comprehensiveenergy utilization efficiency. Thus analyzing the major factors of energy intensity changes becomes a basic issue for improving energy intensity.Under such a background,the structural decomposition analysis (SDA) is used to capture the driven factors of China's energy intensity changes. First, energy intensity changes are decomposed into five components-energy consumption coefficient, Leontief inverse coefficient, final demand structure, final demands by category, and final energy consumption coefficient. Second,the contribution of each component to China's energy intensity changes is evaluated to determine the predominant factors. As for database, monetary input-output table is coupled with energy consumption to establish physical-monetary energy input-outputtables for the years 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2012, ata constant price level of 2002. Some interesting findings are obtained in the empirical study:(1) From 1997 to 2012, China's energy consumption keptan increasing trend, whilethe energy intensity reduced with fluctuations.(2) The energy consumption coefficient wasthe leading factorfor China's energy intensity changes.(3) However, the influence of technology coefficient (Leontiefinverse)gradually increased and exceededthat of energy consumption coefficient during 2007-2012.Furthermore, these results provide helpful insights into policy designs for energy conservation and emissions reduction in China.

Key words: energy intensity, structural decomposition analysis, input-output table, energy consumption coefficient, leontief inverse coefficient