NADS Researcher’s Essay has been commented by the Journal Nature Energy

Recently, Yu Yihua, associate professor at department of economics, researcher at NADS, RUC and co-author Guo Jin’s essay Identifying Electricity-saving Potential in Rural China: Empirical Evidence from a Household Survey, which was published on SSCI journal Energy Policy (5 year impact factor: 4.599), has been commented by the journal Nature Energy as research highlights.

According to the essay, the electricity demand of residents in China’s rural areas is expected to increase rapidly in the future thanks to the rising retain number of household appliances. For instance, the retain proportion of color TV increased from 4.7% to 116.9%, 1990 to 2012, while the figure of washing machine and refrigerator respectively raise from 9.1% to 67.2%, 67.2% to 67.3% during the same period. Such change may lead to the increasing electricity usage of 400 million people in rural areas, which will reach 2,219 kilowatt hours per year by 2030.

However, the potentiality of household electrical energy saving still remains unknown. The article tries to make contribution to this field by assessing the determinant of electricity usage of 3,404 rural families based on the data collected from Chinese Residential Energy Consumption Survey，or CRECS. The article finds out that most of the rural families hold that their consumption behavior is effective and energy-saving, which could hardly be affected by the electricity price and energy label. This article also points out that the consuming information offered to consumers is believed to have played an important role in their behaviors. In the essay, researchers also categorize electricity consumption of the residents into two parts: the consumption that is unable to be economized and the loosened consumption. It shows that the reflection of the demand of rural area towards prices weakened due to the existence of alternative energies and the energy-saving behaviors caused by supply chain shortage. In this sense, policy reform that aims at reducing energy consuming prices may lead to limited influence in the future. In order to achieve the goal of energy saving, timely feedback information, such as information from detailed electricity bill, automatic reading machine and family energy screen, is fundamental.

The essay is one of the achievements of Chinese Residential Energy Consumption Survey, which was subsidized by Department of Scientific Research Management, National Academy of Development and Strategy and School of Economics, Renmin University of China.

Essay Address: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301343?via%3Dihub

Comment Address：http://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy201682