This paper analyzes energy-related CO2 emissions and production water use as the constrictions for energy development in northwestern China. By two period division methods such as one-year one-period and multi-year phased period, CO2 emissions per unit of GDP and production water use are decomposed with a temporal decomposition technique. By compared with the average national level, carbon intensity and water intensity in 2016 are decomposed with a cross-regional decomposition technique. After a pairwise comparison of each influence factor between studied regions, what causes the variations in both intensity indicators among these five northwestern provinces is distinguished. Then the restrictions of energy development could be studied within an integrated framework of decomposing CO2 emissions and water use in two dimensions such as time and space. Besides, the secondary industry is divided into non-energy industry and energy industry for the analysis of the effects of energy industry development. Moreover, renewable energy substitution factor is newly added to the decomposition of CO2 emissions per unit of GDP, which is acted as an influence factor for the reduction of CO2 emissions by the change of energy consumption structure. Finally, policy suggestions for sustainable development of energy industry in northwestern China are proposed. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.