Abstract
Solid fuels are still widely used in rural China though the living standard has improved greatly. Energy poverty is an obvious indicator of poverty, which has serious effects on economic development, environment, and health. In this paper, we conducted a detailed analysis on fuel choice and usage behavior of different end-use activities in rural residential energy consumption. Using 717 household observations from micro-survey data in two counties of Shandong and Hebei province in 2016, we find that biomass is the dominant fuel used for cooking among all energy sources despite of obvious decreasing trend in recent years, accounting for 44%. Clean energy used to cook increased markedly with a proportion of nearly 50%. Solar energy is an ordinary fuel used for water heating except for biomass. Almost 90% of households rely on coal for space heating in winter, and one-third of households have space heating for fewer than two months. Ownership of home appliances for basic needs is higher than that for hedonistic needs, and usage behaviors of some appliances are economical. Fuel accessibility of commercial energy have improved noticeably in rural areas, and the high proportion usage of biomass is affected by family income, usage habits, local resources, environmental recognition, education, and age. Since the negative effects of using solid fuels, it is urgent to cleanse biomass, develop new energy, and improve residents’ cognition about the consequences of using solid fuels.
Highlights
With the progress of industrialization and urbanization, China’s rapidly increasing use of energy has received much attention in recent years, and has contributed to 28% of global carbon emissions in 2014 [1]
This paper contributes to describing the characteristics of rural energy consumption and the detailed usage behaviors by remedying the data limitation of previous studies through a detailed questionnaire design, offering in-depth reasons related to different fuel choices of end-use activities, which can provide some intuitions for decision-making
This paper presents a descriptive analysis on rural energy consumption based on 717 observation surveys in two counties of Northern China, and we use primary fuel choice to substitute quantity for different end-use activities due to those left behind in rural areas are usually the elderly and children, who have limited recognition about energy consumption
Summary
With the progress of industrialization and urbanization, China’s rapidly increasing use of energy has received much attention in recent years, and has contributed to 28% of global carbon emissions in 2014 [1]. The most notable effort is the National Improved Stove Program (NISP); this program promised to offer rural households more efficient biomass stoves, which is beneficial to the environment and human health Though those programs have made great achievements in improving the level of rural energy consumption, difficulties still exist and constrain the development of these programs [14,15,16]. This paper contributes to describing the characteristics of rural energy consumption and the detailed usage behaviors by remedying the data limitation of previous studies through a detailed questionnaire design, offering in-depth reasons related to different fuel choices of end-use activities, which can provide some intuitions for decision-making. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the field survey design and the descriptive analysis of the data used in this paper; Section 3 presents the different fuel choice and usage behaviors in different end-use activities; Section 4 explores the factors affecting the fuel choice of rural residents; and Section 5 gives this paper’s conclusions and some implications for the government
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