The Impact Of Household Consumption Activities On Energy Consumption In China: An Input-output Analysis

The research and policy making of energy issues has always been focusing on the industrial field; however, consumer activities, being the end of the economic chain, exert both the direct and the indirect impact on energy consumption. Developed countries started to conduct research on energy requirements from the consumption perspective as early as 1970s where as China's lagging behind in this field. This thesis, starting from the consumer activities, aims to describe the energy requirements embodying in the household consumption through the link between production and consumption, and moreover investigate the driving forces and to what extent these driving forces influence the energy consumption.The highlights of this research are firstly to distinguish between the direct energy consumption and indirect energy consumption, and secondly to measure the indirect energy consumption by using the input-output model, therefore, bridging the relationship between production and consumption to some extent. In addition, the Structural Decomposition Analysis is employed here to decompose the driving forces.The results show that the total energy consumption of urban and rural households accounts for 45%-60% of China's total energy requirement in the period of 1997-2005, in which the indirect energy consumption takes up the major proportion of about 57%-65%; for urban households the indirect energy consumption has larger impact while for rural households the direct energy consumption has larger impact. Transportation and communication is the most energy intensive activity, and urban households have more non-material demand such as'mobility'and all kinds of'services'while rural households demand lots of necessities such as direct energy consumption, food and housing. In terms of driving forces, economic growth and technology change are the major ones, contributing 42% (positive) and 37% (negative) respectively; the urbanization, the change of income and consumption structure are also important factors that influence the energy consumption. According to the scenario analysis, in 2010 China's total household energy consumption is forecasted to constitute 68%-86% of total energy consumption with the changes of the driving forces.The thesis proposes several policy implications as conclusions: those energy-intensive basic industries should try to improve the energy efficiency through technological progress; while service industries such as real estate, education service and household service should shift its input-output structure to achieve energy conservation. In addition, adjusting income distribution and encouraging the sustainable lifestyle are also important measures for reducing the household energy consumption.