Identifying the fundamental drives behind the 10-year evolution of northern China's rural household energy and emission: Implications for 2030 and beyond

Abstract

Rural household energy, particularly solid fuels, in northern China is thought to be a major source of air pollution. However, there is no complete, systematic, and reliable dataset for northern China's rural areas owing to the diversity of energy types used and the difficulty in acquiring data, particularly for solid fuels. Here we assessed existing progress in estimating solid fuels and proposed a practical route for deriving the information on rural household energy consumption and structure in northern China spanning 2010–2020, with important findings. (i) In 2010, the total rural household energy consumption for northern China was 287.51 million tons standard coal equivalent (TCE), while for 2020, it decreased to 205.14 million TCE, showing a 29 % decrease and an annual down 3.3 % averagely. Among a number of underlying reasons, China's urbanization process, which made the rural population shrink year by year, was primarily responsible. (ii) The share of clean energy in northern rural areas began at 4.2 % in 2010 and grew to 15.6 % in 2020, displaying a sustained improvement in energy structure. Particularly in the second 5 years, the clean energy share of policy priority areas grew by 20.0 percentage points (from 15.0 % in 2010 to 35.0 % in 2020), which is more than 18 percentage points higher than the growth of non-priority areas (from 2.9 % in 2010 to 4.5 % in 2020). Clean air policy, particularly the “two replacements” (replace coal with gas and electricity), in priority areas played a core role in changing the energy structure. (iii) Although both air pollutants and CO2 are predicted to decrease in 2030, there is a large gap between expected 2030 emissions and hoped 2060 carbon neutrality in northern rural households. It is thus necessary to gradually boost the share of green electricity (non-fossil) and to reverse the trend of “biomass fuel curtailment” in rural residential sector. This calls for the improvement in biomass style (e.g., biomass pellets) and in stove efficiency (e.g., complete combustion).