Abstract
This paper brings out some remarkable differences between China as a developing country experiencing high economic growth and the Netherlands as a developed country by examining the driving forces behind the evolution of residential energy consumption per capita (RECpc) in the two countries in the period from 2001 to 2015. The components we analysed are income, energy-intensity, weather and energy-mix effects. The most remarkable result is the changing effect of energy intensity in China: during 2001–2007 energy intensity increased, and decreased afterward. The changes reflected changes in material circumstances: the shift to relative energy intensive goods and of saturation of energy demand for heating and cooling. In the Netherlands, the declining energy intensity, warmer winters and the more diversified energy mix decreased RECpc by 511.39, 58.81 and 1.08 kgce, respectively. Although the income growth both increased RECpc in the two countries, the relatively high-speed increasing income in China narrowed the RECpc gap between the two countries. This study implies that the opposite changes in RECpc in developing and developed countries are due to the different development stages reached by the countries. Policy suggestions are being offered to deal with the different circumstances, as revealed through this study.
Highlights
Despite the wide gap in per capita energy consumption between developed and developing countries, it has somewhat narrowed over recent decades
The declined energy intensity contributes overwhelmingly, which causes residential energy consumption per capita (RECpc) to decrease in the Netherlands
Since the Dutch people’s residential energy consumption (REC) demand had already been satisfied for a long time, they did not need to spend more of their income on increasing their REC, which leads to a decline of energy intensity in the residential sector in the Netherlands, and the energy intensity is expected to further decline in the future
Summary
Despite the wide gap in per capita energy consumption between developed and developing countries, it has somewhat narrowed over recent decades. To investigate the reasons behind the large gap in residential energy consumption (REC) between developing and developed countries, we select China and the Netherlands, respectively, as typical examples. China and the Netherlands differ greatly in terms of land area and population, we compare their residential energy consumption per capita (RECpc), which is not affected by the size of the two countries.
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