Abstract: The accelerating expansion in energy consumption is creating serious environmental problems on both global and regional scales, which forces people to re-examine the conflicting relationship among environmental protection, economic growth and technological progress. In this case, scientific analysis of energy consumption is of great importance for energy strategy and policy planning. The management of energy use needs to be addressed from a perspective where sustainability constitutes a constraint on the decision-making process, rejecting those strategies which only focus on the pursuit of wealth accumulation. Based on IPAT identity and LMDI method, a driving model and a decomposition model of energy eco-footprint were both established in this paper. By adopting the two models, the impacts of economic growth and technological progress on energy eco-footprint per capita in Jilin Province from 1994 to 2008 were analyzed. In the meanwhile, a curved surface in three dimensions that the energy eco-footprint per capita varies with GDP per capita and energy eco-footprint intensity with different proportions was drawn. The results showed that during the last 17 years, the economic growth with the sign of the GDP per capita was a major driving force whose contribution to the change in the energy eco-footprint per capita amounted to an average of 0.054 hm² each year, while technological progress with the sign of the energy eco-footprint intensity made a negative contribution of -0.027 hm2 annually. As a whole, the economic impact was estimated to be twice as much as technological impact. Moreover, since the gap between the two impacts had widened in recent years, the energy eco-footprint per capita increased rapidly, and thus led to heavier eco-environmental pressures associated with energy consumption. In the future, technological progress should be paid more attention as it is the restriction to the increase in energy eco-footprint. In addition, with irregular fluctuation of two variables of the GDP per capita and the energy eco-footprint intensity, the pattern of the energy eco-footprint per capita will be a compound curved surface. The key point of innovation in this paper is to measure the impacts of economic growth and technological progress on energy eco-footprint by combing IPAT identity and LMDI method. At last, some detailed suggestions for slowing down the growth in energy eco-footprint were put forward.

Key words: energy eco-footprint, economic factor, technological factor, IPAT identity, LMDI method, Jilin Province