Is the energy efficiency improvement conducive to the saving of residential electricity consumption in China?

Abstract

The urbanization process and the continuous upgrading of consumption structure have driven the rapid growth of China’s residential electricity consumption, making it urgent to strengthen energy conservation and emission reduction in the residential sector. Improving the efficiency of electricity use is an effective method to reduce the consumption of electricity, but the rebound effect (RE) also emerges. Is it still conducive to saving electricity? In response to this question, this article selects the relevant data in China during 2010–2016 to construct the panel linear model and the panel threshold model respectively to analyze the direct RE of residential electricity consumption. The results show that: (1) The average RE of China’s residential electricity use is 84.94%. It indicates that energy efficiency improvement can lower residents’ electricity use, but only 15.06% of the expected target can be achieved. (2) The direct RE in high-income regime (PGDP>76023.67) and low-income regime (PGDP≤76023.67) is 59.15% and 80.79% respectively, meaning that energy efficiency measures in the high-income regime are more effective. (3) The direct RE in the high-population regime (POP>6083.28) and low-population regime (POP≤6083.68) is 120.09% and 83.91% respectively, indicating that energy efficiency improvement in the high-population regime has intensified residents’ electricity consumption. Therefore, to maximum energy saving effect, the government should take the inter-provincial heterogeneity of the RE into consideration and introduce market-oriented measures such as price and tax to restrain it.