The rapid development of China's economy has driven the growth of energy consumption. However, the domination of the energy structure by fossil energy not only increases carbon emissions but is also an important source of fog and haze in China. This will cause global warming and increase people's lung diseases. To alleviate these problems, renewable energy (RE) development is crucial in reducing CO2 emissions, promoting economic development, and reducing fog and haze in China. Industry accounts for the highest proportion of energy consumption, so an efficient adjustment of the industrial structure will greatly contribute to overall energy development, economic development, and environmental protec-tion. By analyzing the sales output value of China's industrial subsectors, together with energy con-sumption and CO2 emissions, this paper determines which industries should be encouraged and which industries should be restricted in China. Finally, RE strategies and industrial policies are proposed for Chinese government references. The contributions of the paper are three-fold: (1) propose a novel framework for the development of China in the aspects of energy, economy, and environmental policies; (2) provide valuable information for the Chinese government to enable it to understand which industries should be encouraged to improve its economic competitiveness; and (3) use hybrid methods (e.g., en-tropy method and weighted sum method) to rank the energy and CO2 productivity, and the recom-mendations will provide strategic guidance for China's energy development. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.