Rural Household Energy Consumption And Energy Poverty In The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Household energy consumption has been a significant contributor to increasing global energy demand and carbon emissions,making the household sector one of the most crucial factors shaping the management of development towards sustainability.At the same time,household-oriented policy-making has become an important regulatory tool for global energy transformation.Many studies have found that household energy consumption is affected by various factors,including income level,building characteristics,household characteristics,local environment,and culture.Therefore,it is logical to carry out surveys of household energy consumption at multiple times and scales to systematically determine the fundamental mode of regional household energy use.Exploring the spatial patterns and influencing factors of household energy consumption and investigating the potential and main obstacles of household energy conservation are conducive to improving the high-precision interpretation of household energy consumption scenarios and to providing fundamental support for decision-making towards sustainable energy transformation.The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is an essential ecological barrier in China and a fragile ecological environmental system with representative cultural diversity.Therefore,an analysis of the human-land relationship on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is very important scientifically and practically to promote regional sustainable development.This study uses Qinghai Province as the target area,conducts a household energy consumption survey based on field research,and establishes a regional survey by investigating household energy consumption in pastoral areas and agricultural and pastoral areas.At the household scale,this study determines the structure,spatial characteristics,multidimensional effects and optimization strategies of household energy consumption,providing essential understanding of household energy activities and promoting sustainable development of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.First,this study reviewed domestic and international progress in household energy consumption research,constructed a literature review and analysis framework of household energy consumption,and summarized the research topics,main features and influencing factors of foreign household energy consumption based on Citespace and other bibliometric analysis methods with a comparative analysis.Revealing the behavioral processes and driving forces of domestic and foreign household energy consumption fully demonstrates the relevant scientific problems and innovation of this research and provides necessary support and guidance for questionnaire design,field research,and subsequent in-depth analysis.Based on the literature review,geography and human/social characteristic analysis of Qinghai Province,the study design includes the basic situation of the surveyed households and their structures,source of household energy consumption,household energy consumption,energy utility and preference,policy mechanism and effect,and energy conservation.The questionnaires included six categories with a total of 86specific questions,and then,the surveys were conducted in the target area with 498returned surveys to serve as the samples.The survey sites included 22 counties located in 13 municipalities in Qinghai Province.Based on stratified random sampling,in the agro-pastoral area,more than 50 households were selected for in-person visits,and a database of household energy consumption activities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was constructed.The database was built using the questionnaire-based survey and other documents such as the Statistical Yearbooks,and the energy poverty level was first evaluated by investigating the relationship between household income and energy consumption expenditure.Then,a quantification of household energy consumption and energy availability and a cognitive analysis were conducted,systematically clarifying the temporal and spatial variation in regional household energy consumption,illustrating the environmental effects and health effects of household energy consumption.Finally,a material flow analysis approach was applied by in combination with visualization software to establish a typical household energy flow model to identify critical behaviors of household energy collection-consumption-emissions processes accurately.The results show that 1)household income,population size,energy availability,and education level are important factors affecting household energy consumption,while regional geographical environmental characteristics and resource endowments determine the essential characteristics of household energy structure,agricultural areas,and pastoral areas.There are also spatial differences in the energy consumption structure of households in the agro-pastoral zone.For instance,the proportion of energy used by households in the pastoral,agricultural and agro-pastoral areas was 71.6%,49.6%,and 52.89%,respectively;households in rural areas mainly use firewood?31.9%?and straw?22.3%?,while in the agro-pastoral zone,the principal energy sources are coal?21.97%?,livestock manure?21.11%?,and fuelwood?16.7%?;coal's substitution effect on noncommodity energy consumption is significantly lower than that of biogas.Vehicle energy use has become the main growth point of household energy consumption and shows a further growth trend.2)Approximately 57%of rural households are energy poor.The results also indicate that Qinghai might have passed the phase of energy poverty in terms of basic energy access;instead,a process to increase the share of modern energy in household energy consumption needs attention.Considering that the population is income nonpoor and energy poor,the conventional policy design that primarily targets income-poor households may be inappropriate in this case.3)Compared with low-income families,high-income households consume more energy.In the pastoral areas,the household energy consumption structure has shifted to multiple energy sources,and the proportion of coal consumption has increased.The households in this area need more energy to meet the living requirements of heating?2507 kgce?,cooking?2575 kgce?,and transportation?581 kgce?than that needed in the agricultural area and the farming-pastoral area.In the agricultural area,although electricity is considered by the households to be the most critical energy type,electricity use accounts for only 4%of the energy consumption structure;in the agro-pastoral zone,which is affected by agricultural policies and animal husbandry and with the dual impact of industry policies,household energy consumption has shifted to a multienergy structure dominated by coal.Because the region has different cultures,household environmental awareness and consumption are different,which makes the impact on household energy consumption different.4)The environmental and ecological effects of household energy consumption have complex characteristics.The annual per capita emissions of pastoral,agricultural and agro-pastoral areas were 3,857kg,2,977 kg,and 4,197 kg,respectively,followed by CH₄ and NO₂.Of the areas,the pastoral areas have the most CH₄ emissions,and the warming effect was noticeable.SO₂ is the primary pollutant produced by household energy consumption in the agricultural and pastoral areas.The per capita annual emissions were 12.98 kg.TSP is the most crucial pollutant produced by household energy consumption in the pastoral areas,and the annual per capita emissions were 20.12 kg.Large combustion of biomass energy and stove facilities are a major cause of household greenhouse gas emissions and pollutant emissions.In the future,we need to strengthen research on regional household energy consumption structure,spatial-temporal processes,motivation mechanisms and sustainable development of energy to explore the spatial-social structure of household energy consumption and spatial-temporal interactions.