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Study On Urban And Rural Household Energy Consumption And Influence Factors In Gannan Tibetan Area

Posted on:2016-06-22Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y L SunFull Text:PDF
GTID:1109330461471037Subject:Human Geography
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Due to the environmental problems, people begin to worry about the sustainable development of human civilization, and to rethink the relationship between man and nature. The human civilization has experienced three stages, including primitive civilization, agricultural civilization and industrial civilization. With the improvement of the level of productivity, the relationship between man and nature has evolved from submission, adaption to confrontation. In today’s world, environmental problems and poverty exist at the same time, a kind of mutually reinforcing relationship has been formed between excessive population growth, environmental degradation and poverty. Energy utilization mode conversion is one of the forms of human civilization process, but also the important embodiment of survival condition and quality of life of urban and rural residents. With the development of economy and society, the main energy of human consumption was changing, the number of consumption continued to increase. At present, fossil energy is the main energy of resident consumption around the world, resources depletion, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution are caused by mass consumption, environmental problems have became increasingly prominent, and began threatening human survival and development.Gannan Tibetan Area is a unique geographical area, located in the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, is one of the main settlements of Tibetan. As an important water source of Asian continent, the ecological strategic position is important. Due to the sparse population and ecological fragility, this area was low developed in long-term. The climate is cold and wet, the topography gap is large, the landform types are diverse, and this area is a typical agro-pastoral zone. The energy consumption has significantly regional characteristics, and presents obviously regional differentiation characteristic. In recent years, urban and rural economy has achieved rapid development, the population increased rapidly, the energy demand continued to increase, the relationship between man and nature tended to be nervous. Today, this area is facing the dual pressures of protecting ecological environment and developing economy. Therefore, based on the statistical analysis of 483 household’s energy use data in the 6 counties,28 townships (town, street) in 2012, the article analyzed the energy consumption characteristics and internal law of urban and rural families systemically, and putted forward the policy recommendations of sustainable development of energy. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Because of the unique natural geographical conditions and social cultural background, the energy consumption of urban and rural household showed obvious regional characteristics. First, due to the high altitude, low temperature and long heating period, the per capita energy consumption level was high, towns and villages are respectively 883.45,996.05 kgce. Second, due to the lack of alternative sources of energy, the consumption structure was single, the dependence degree on coal and biomass was higher. Among them, coal accounted for the per capita energy consumption of towns as 82.36%, biomass accounted for the per capita energy consumption of villages as 81.85%, and animal manure was the most used energy by the impact of natural resources and living habits of farmers and herdsmen, the proportion was high as 65.33%. Third, the new energy, especially solar energy had a certain degree of popularity in Gannan Tibetan area, but the consumption quantity was less, the level was low. Fourth, due to the use of more commercial energy, the thermal efficiency of town was high as 59.98%, but the thermal efficiency of village was only 18.77%.(2) High level energy consumption of urban and rural families produces large amounts of greenhouse gases and pollutants. CO2 was the main greenhouse gases emissions of urban and rural families, the per capita emissions of towns and villages were respectively 2 816.95,2 120.34 kg, followed by CH4 and N2O, CH4 emissions of village was large, warming effect was obvious. SO2 was the main pollutants from urban household energy consumption, the annual per capita emissions was 15647.09 g, TSP (Total suspended particulate) was the main pollutants from rural household energy consumption, the annual per capita emissions was up to 15 652.42 g. Fossil energy was the main source of greenhouse gases and pollutants emissions in urban families, the largest contribution from coal. In addition to coal, poor facilities and a larger number of biomass energy consumption were the important cause of greenhouse gases and pollutants emissions from rural families. Besides, some problems of ecological degradation caused by consuming a lot of biomass fuel are very serious.(3) Due to the insufficient supply of modern commercial energy, energy poverty coexistence with environmental problems. We chose the 1/2 weighted average of per capita electricity consumption of four major developing countries in 2010 as energy poverty line, which was 17.775 kgce, consisted of Brazil, India, South Africa and China. The proportion of urban and rural households which below the energy poverty line were respectively 10.4%,46.8%. Relatively, the energy poverty problem of village was outstanding, but due to the excessive reliance on traditional biomass, the living quality of farmers and herdsmen have been seriously affected, a greater negative impact on women, so that they loosed study and entertainment time, and affected the body health.(4) The geographical environment has a great influence on urban and rural household energy consumption, and showing significant characteristics of regional differentiation. From towns, agriculture areas, agro-pastoral areas to pastoral areas, the proportion of commercial energy reduced, the number of animal dung and other biomass energy consumption increased, the integrated thermal efficiency decreased gradually. The emissions of the main greenhouse gas SO2 and the main pollutants CO2 of towns were larger, but from agriculture areas, agro-pastoral areas to pastoral areas, the emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants were increasing, in addition to the SO2 from fossil energy consumption. Besides, the degree of energy poverty was gradually increasing.(5) The changes of production and life ways have a profound impact on the herdsman household energy consumption. After the herdsmen settlement, the economy energy use got better, the consumption structure was more diversified, the integrated thermal efficiency improved, the energy saving effect was prominent. From nomadic to settled, the degree of household energy cleanliness raised, the emission reduction effect was significant, and the energy poverty has also been effectively alleviated. However, due to the changes of energy consumption structure, some new environmental problems emerged, needs attention.(6) Due to the differences of production and life ways and energy consumption structure between urban and rural areas, the influence factors of household energy consumption is also different. The results showed that the main influence factors of urban per capita energy consumption were the way of heating, family size, per capita housing area, the use of solar water heaters and annual heating time. The main factors affecting the per capita energy consumption of agricultural areas were followed by family size, family income and per capita arable land area. The main factors affecting the per capita energy consumption of agro-pastoral areas were followed by family size, family income, types of household appliances and annual heating time. The main factors affecting the per capita energy consumption of pastoral areas were followed by lifestyle (settled), family size and religious expenditure.After income increase, the energy consumption demand of urban and rural residents came to upgrade, changed from the survival needs to enjoy type, energy saving and environmental protection consciousness gradually improved. Finally, considering the energy consumption willingness of urban and rural residents.the article has putted forward policy recommendations of the energy construction in Gannan Tibetan Area, provided scientific basis for improving the life level of local residents and converting energy utilization mode. Energy consumption is not only the life problem of urban and rural residents, but also related to economic and social development, ecological environment protection, national strategy security and other issues, energy construction need to be considered in context and planned systematically.
Keywords/Search Tags:household energy consumption, environment effect, energy poverty, regional differentiation, herdsmen settlement, influence factors, Gannan Tibetan areas
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