Xing, Ran;
Luo, Zhihan;
Zhang, Wenxiao;
Xiong, Rui;
Jiang, Ke;
Meng, Wenjun;
Meng, Jing;
... Shen, Guofeng; + view all
(2024)
Household fuel and direct carbon emission disparity in rural China.
Environment International
, 185
, Article 108549. 10.1016/j.envint.2024.108549.
Preview |
Text
Meng_1-s2.0-S0160412024001351-main.pdf Download (3MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Universal access to clean fuels in household use is one explicit indicator of sustainable development while currently still billions of people rely on solid fuels for daily cooking. Despite of the recognized clean transition trend in general, disparities in household energy mix in different activities (e.g. cooking and heating) and historical trends remain to be elucidated. In this study, we revealed the historical changing trend of the disparity in household cooking and heating activities and associated carbon emissions in rural China. The study found that the poor had higher total direct energy consumption but used less modern energy, especially in cooking activities, in which the poor consumed 60 % more energy than the rich. The disparity in modern household energy use decreased over time, but conversely the disparity in total residential energy consumption increased due to the different energy elasticities as income increases. Though per-capita household CO₂ and Black Carbon (BC) emissions were decreasing under switching to modern energies, the disparity in household CO₂ and BC deepened over time, and the low-income groups emitted ∼ 10 kg CO₂ more compared to the high-income population. Relying solely on spontaneous clean cooking transition had limited impacts in reducing disparities in household energy and carbon emissions, whereas improving access to modern energy had substantial potential to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions and its disparity. Differentiated energy-related policies to promote high-efficiency modern heating energies affordable for the low-income population should be developed to reduce the disparity, and consequently benefit human health and climate change equally.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Household fuel and direct carbon emission disparity in rural China |
| Location: | Netherlands |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.envint.2024.108549 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2024.108549 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2024. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CC-BY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Disparity, Residential energy, Carbon emission, Rural China |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10189204 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
