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Household Energy Use and Carbon Emissions in China: A decomposition analysis
Author(s) -
Zhu Qin,
Wei Taoyuan
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
environmental policy and governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.987
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1756-9338
pISSN - 1756-932X
DOI - 10.1002/eet.1675
Subject(s) - china , greenhouse gas , per capita , urbanization , consumption (sociology) , energy consumption , agricultural economics , natural resource economics , economics , economic growth , geography , population , ecology , demography , social science , archaeology , sociology , biology
Although its per‐capita carbon emissions are still relatively low, China's aggregated carbon emissions have grown nearly four‐fold in the last three decades, and now it is the biggest CO 2 emitter in the world. There are many reasons for this emissions growth, and much emphasis has been placed on industrial development, but previous research has estimated that 40% of the growth in Chinese CO 2 emissions over the 15 years to 2007 can be attributed to household energy consumption. Here we conduct a decomposition analysis to show that in the period from 1978 to 2008 nearly 60% of the growth in Chinese household emissions can be attributed to the increasing number of households and 40% to increasing emissions per household. We also show that over this period emissions growth in urban households has been six times that of rural households. These results have important implications for policy‐makers seeking to promote reductions in China's CO 2 emissions, relating for example to family planning and urbanization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment