The Impact of Lifestyle on Energy
Use and CO2 Emission
Yi
Ming Wei et al (2005), carried out a research to determine the impact of life
style on energy use and its related carbon emission. They came up with some
interesting findings. They were able to establish the existence of a
relationship between energy consumption and carbon emission, and that this
relationship is greatly in influenced by lifestyle.
Consumers
may directly or indirectly use energy. Direct usages include such use as
domestic electricity supply, gas/coal for space heating during winter and Air Condition
for home cooling during summer. While indirect energy usage has to do with their
buying of consumer goods, products of industrial process with great energy
input.
The
writers reckoned that China is an economy in transition, and urbanization means
more and more rural residence migrating to urban regions, and because of
economic growth, urban residence consumption of home appliances increase and
places greater demand on energy which in turn leads to greater CO2
emission.
Taking
a critical look at the impact of urban and rural residence lifestyle on energy
use and carbon emission, the writers posits the following findings with policy
implication, focusing on 2002:
§ For the urban residence, the indirect impact of
energy use and carbon emission was higher than the direct impact; the indirect
impact being 2.44 time that of direct impact. The policy significance of this
is that the Chinese government should compel or encourage the urban residence
to imbibe the following habits: 1) Reduce per capital energy use for heating/cooling.
2) The government should institute energy conservation standard for home
appliances. 3) The government should go into full scale production of green
food.
§ Meanwhile, for the rural dwellers, their direct
energy use is higher than that of indirect (Yi Ming Wei et al., 2002), their
direct energy use was 1.86 time that of the indirect. The policy implications
here are: 1). Government should focus on developing clean energy generation
technology in rural residence. 2). Reduce the use of motorcycle as source of
transportation as its energy-intensive. 3). Rural residence should use gas for
home heating rather than coal with high CO2 coefficient.
