The status and changes of
the rural household energy consumption (RHEC) and its pollutants emission in Shandong province, China, from 1995 to 2010 were assessed, as well as
the red
uctions of
the air pollutants by developing modern bioenergy (MBE). The results indicated that
the RHEC significantly increased with annual growth rate of 1.04% during
the study period, and significantly changed from
the traditional energy use pattern to
the commercial energy use pattern. The income effect (
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the critical factor responsible for
the increased RHEC, while
the energy intensity effect (
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the population effect (
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the dominant factors responsible for
the decreased RHEC.
Correspondingly, total emissions of
the majority pollutants including CO
2, particulate matters (PMs), NO
x and SO
2 significantly increased with increasing RHEC, and positively correlated with
the proportion of commercial energy (
PCE) used in RHEC (
r=0.821–0.992,
P<0.05). In addition, CO emission showed a slight decreasing tendency in
the same period. Based on
the status of RHEC in 2010,
the total development potential of MBE can reach up to 11.0×10
6 tce, thus
the emissions of CO
2, CO, PMs and SO
2 can be red
uced by 64.8%, 90.6%, 78.7% and 64.2%, respectively. Unfortunately,
the emission of NO
x will increase by 31.8%, which is mainly due to
the biomass-fired electricity ra
ther than
the coal-fired electricity. These results indicated that multiple benefits could be achieved through using
the CS feedstock to develop
the MBE prod
ucts for RHEC.