| Abstract |
With support from the Blue Moon Fund (BMF), Global Environmental Institute (GEI) started this research to gain an understanding of energy consumption in rural China, the impacts of rural energy consumption on climate change, and analyzing factors affecting energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Refers to energy consumption, this report mainly analyzes the current situation, development pattern and future trends of rural residential and production energy consumption, with more focus on residential sector. It finds out that rural residential energy consumption in China shows obvious structure transitions from non-commercial energy to commercial energy ，which indicates that more CO2 emissions will be generated from rural energy sector. The use of residential commercial energy is increasing fast since 2001, with average annual per capita growth rate of 10%, nearly 1.5 times faster than that of urban. As for rural production energy consumption, the total energy consumption and structure of different commercial energies have been keeping stable. As for rural energy on climate change, this report analyzes the CO2 emissions generated from rural residential sector. It finds out that the major contributor to CO2 emissions from rural residential sector is coal and electricity (in direct emissions generated from thermal power generation), followed by LPG. However, there is a significant difference in southern and northern rural areas because of climate difference. In southern rural areas, the biggest contributor is electricity, followed by coal and LPG; while in northern rural areas, the biggest contributor is coal, mainly for space heating in winter, followed by electricity. |
