Drivers and key pathways of the household energy consumption in the Yangtze river economic belt

Abstract

The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is one of the most energy-consuming regions in China, accounting for 36% of the nation's total energy consumption in 2019. The fundamental purpose of productive activities in production sectors is to meet the increasing consumption demand of the household sector. The household sector plays an important role in promoting energy consumption. Taking the household energy consumption in the YREB as the research object, we establish a hybrid multi-regional input-output model and analyze the drivers of the household energy consumption by using the structural decomposition analysis method. The results show that the energy intensity is the main factor inhibiting energy consumption while the energy structure and the urban-rural consumption per capita are the main factors promoting the energy consumption. Furthermore, we use the structural path betweenness method to identify the critical transmission sectors and the key pathways. It can be found that energy sectors, manufacturing sectors and transportation sectors play important roles in energy transfer. Among them, energy from sector S1 mainly flows to sector S4, energy from sector S2 mainly flows to sector S3, while energy from sector S3 and sector S4 mainly flows to manufacturing sectors. The above results are expected to provide strong evidence for energy consumption reform in the YREB.