Economic growth, population changes and residential energy consumption in China

Leiwen Jiang, Brown University

This paper aims at studying the impacts of economic growth, population compositional changes on residential energy consumption and its environment consequences in China. Applying the China Rural and Urban Socio-economic Household Survey datasets in the 1990s and historical socio-economic, demographic data and macro date of energy use, we analyze the relative importance of changes in residential energy use to the general trends of overall energy consumption; study the relationship between population, income and energy consumption and its consequent emission of radiative pollution. By statistically analyzing Chinese rural and urban household energy consumption, we stress the importance of urbanization in the energy transition from biomass to modern fuel. Combining with population and household projection results, we simulate the impacts of household compositional changes and urbanization on future residential energy consumption under different socioeconomic and demographic scenarios.