Analysis Of Urban And Rural Household Energy Consumption And Survival Status From Multi-dimensional Perspective

At present, as an important material basis for human survival and development, energy promote economic development, social progress and human welfare enhancing, but meanwhile it also brings climate change and environmental pollution, which has been concerned by international community. Household energy consumption is an important aspect of energy saving and emission reduction, what related to the overall strategy of sustainable energy development. With the acceleration of the urbanization process in China, the energy consumption structure and pattern of urban and rural households has changed greatly. The quantity, structure and pattern of energy use become important yardstick to measure household living standard and survival status.The western region of the Loess Plateau is a typical ecological fragile area, with low level of economic development. The difference of living level between urban and rural residents is obvious, of which the difference of energy consumption level appear outstanding. Taking the western region of the Loess Plateau as a case study, under the conceptual framework of the "energy-economy-environment" system, this paper represent the mechanism of association between household energy consumption and the human survival status from multi-dimensional perspective, through theoretical discussion on energy issues and in-depth analysis of a large number of survey data. In the theoretical part, theory of sustainable energy development, energy demand theory and the energy ladder theory are introduced as the theoretical support, and the energy ladder theory is expanded and extended. These theories are applied to the empirical study. The domestic and international energy-related research is divided into six areas to sort out and comment, thereby lay the foundation for this study. In the empirical part, access to the information of household energy use through the questionnaire survey conducted in big city, medium-sized cities, small cities, county towns and rural areas of the study area, obtain1166effective samples in total. First, based on the complete handle of the types, quantity, structure, efficiency and spending of energy consumption in urban and rural households, summarizes the differences of household energy consumption and its change pattern of characteristic like ladder from big city to rural area, and propose quantitative evaluation method to energy attributes(availability, economy, cleanliness, substitutability, convenience), then reveal the main factors that affect energy use, that reflect the survival status of family from energy consumption perspective. Next, apply the extended linear expenditure system model (ELES) to analyze the energy demand of urban and rural households and conduct a comparative study. Finally, use the emission factors to calculate pollutants emissions from the household level and social level respectively in the five regions and the emission reduction effects of alternative energy. The main conclusions are as follows:First, urban and rural household energy use shows similar but also different characteristics. In terms of type structure, urban households are dominant by fossil energy, while rural households are dominant by both the biomass energy and fossil energy. In terms of purpose structure, cooking and heating energy use accounted for a majority of household energy consumption, and cooking energy used by rural household is significantly higher than urban household. Taking statistical analysis to the amount of energy consumption and the quantitative evaluation of energy properties, the results show that the per capita effective heat is351.49kgce,303.67kgce,288.07kgce,245.68kgce and123.6kgce in the big city, medium-sized cities, small cities, county towns and rural areas, respectively. Energy attribute score appear the downward trend from big city to rural area, and the attributes score of energy used by a rural resident is only about60%of that by an urban resident. The energy ladder feature is obvious. A good cross-quadratic function can be built between per capita effective heat and two independent variables including per capita income and energy attributes. The effective heat is the result of two independent variables interacting together, income being the most important. In the three-dimensional graph, the scattered points distribution of rural and urban areas constitute two distinct congregate areas, that reveals the differences in living standards and survival status between urban and rural households. High-income households in urban areas consume more quantity and high-quality energy, and can be highly met with energy use, being in the well-off living conditions. While low-income households in rural areas obtain less effective heat, and use poor quality fuels, they are still at the level of basic survival.Second, the energy expenditure shows the ladder characteristic of decrease in turn from big cities to rural areas. The annual per capita energy expenditure in rural households is about half of urban households, and rural residents spend more on the survival consumption. According to the estimation results of ELES model, it can be found that the marginal propensity to consume the energy in urban and rural households is0.044and0.065, respectively, what make clear that when the income increase, rural residents will increase more energy expenditures than urban residents. The basic energy expenditure of urban households is366.52yuan, while that of rural households is269.11yuan. The energy demand of urban residents is higher than rural residents. From the perspective of the proportion of basic energy expenditure accounting for the actual expenditure of energy consumption, demand for survival consumption of rural residents is higher than urban residents. These reflect differences in the level of consumption, consumer attitudes, lifestyles and living condition between urban and rural residents.Third, use the emission factor to calculate pollutant emissions which produced by household energy consumption, accounting from household perspective, the emissions generated by energy use of rural households are significantly larger than those of urban households. However, accounting from social perspective, the difference of emissions between urban and rural households is little. A good cross-quadratic function can be built between per capita effective heat and two independent variables including per capita income and the emissions, and the effective heat mainly depends on income levels. The emission index has little influence on effective heat, but it has the bi-directional roles. On the one hand, it reflects the tendency of consumers choosing clean energy. On the other hand, it reflects the inevitable trend that the more energy used, the more emissions produced. Taking the analysis of energy alternatives, the results showed that there is significant emission reduction benefits as the advanced energy including natural gas, solar, biogas substitute the traditional energy like coal, thermal power, biomass, also huge potential for future emission reduction.Based on the above research, this paper presents the policy orientation of energy saving and emission reduction in the household energy consumption, and provide practical policy recommendations for urban and rural energy construction and environmental management under the background of comprehensively building a well-off society. Thus it could guide the energy consumption to development toward low carbon and sustainable direction.