The Relationship between Urbanization and Domestic Energy Consumption:An Empirical Study of Shandong Province,China

The rapid development of urbanization has led to a rapid increase in total energy consumption.The proportion of domestic energy consumption to total energy consumption has gradually increased and has become the major driving force for energy consumption.With the pressure from urbanization and domestic energy consumption,it is necessary to study the impact of urbanization on domestic energy consumption of the regional level and to explore the function paths of these two factors.The findings are helpful to realize sustainable development based on the actual situation analysis,horizontal survey data and statistical yearbook panel data.The current situation and changing trends in domestic energy consumption of Shandong Province are systematically examined through field investigation and survey questionnaire.The time-series econometric model is applied to analyze the relationship between urbanization rate and total domestic energy consumption.The research results show that the total domestic energy consumption and urbanization rate of Shandong are generally increasing.The urbanization rate development and domestic energy consumption have a long-term stable and balanced relationship.An increase in urbanization rate can cause an increase in domestic energy consumption.There is a slight difference between the average total energy consumption levels of urban and rural residents,but their energy consumption structures differ a lot.These findings provide basic data support and reference for local governments to formulate energy-conservation and emission-reduction policies.

SOME ADVANCES IN CLIMATE WARMING IMPACT RESEARCH IN CHINA SINCE 1990

Increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will strengthen the natural greenhouse effect,which could lead to global climate warming and more other changes.China is a largely agricultural country with a large size of population and the relative shortages of farming lands and water resources,thus increasing the importance of climate warming for national economy development.Therefore,Chinese government and scientists have paid great attention to the impact-assessment of climate warming on national economy in China,especially during the past 10 years.This presentation will briefly describe some major issues of climate warming impact research on national vegetation,agriculture,forest,water resources,energy use and regional sea level for China,etc. As a result,all climate change scenarios derived by GCMs suggest a substantial change in the characteristic natural vegetation types.It is also shown that comparing with the distribution simulated under the normal time period 1951—1980 as the present climate,by 2050 large changes in cropping systems would occur almost everywhere in China.Climate warming would lead to increase cropping diversification and multiplication.Unfortunately,the possible net balance between precipitation and evapotranspiration would be negative and it would lead to reduce the grain production in China significantly due to enhanced moisture stress in soil.The most evident influence of climate warming on water resources would happen in Huanghe-Huaihe-Haihe Basin and the water supply-demand deficit would be substantially enhanced in this area.And also,a warmer climate for China will alter the energy requirement for domestic heating and cooling,that is, reduce energy use for heating in northern China and increase energy consumption for cooling in southern China.