Gigatonnes Missing Biomass Energy Consumption in Rural China

Shimei Wu, Xiao Han, Chuan-Zhong Li, Andreas Löschel, Xi Lu, Limin Du, Xinye Zheng and Chu Wei
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Andreas Löschel

The Energy Journal, 2024, vol. 45, issue 5, 149-166

Abstract: To provide a more comprehensive reconstruction of China’s energy consumption, this paper built a machine-learning-based geospatial model that shows great accuracy in recovering historical biomass consumption data using the household survey dataset for China, combined with province-level characteristics and spatiotemporal information. Our study suggested that 6.9 ± 2.6 giga-tons of coal equivalent of biomass were uncounted in China’s statistics, representing 15.9 ± 6.0 percent for China and 2.5 ± 0.9 percent for global final energy consumption. This new estimate significantly reshaped our understanding of China’s energy composition, sectoral mix, indoor air pollutants, and the factors driving energy consumption. These findings provide a replicable template for developing countries hoping to uncover the biomass demand to better design public policy to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. JEL Classification: Q41, Q53, R12, C81, O13

Keywords: machine learning; biomass demand; rural energy statistics; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01956574241266970 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:enejou:v:45:y:2024:i:5:p:149-166

DOI: 10.1177/01956574241266970

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Energy Journal
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().