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 r
eductions 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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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 r
educed 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 rather than the coal-fired electricity. These results indicated that multiple benefits could be achieved through using the CS feedstock to develop the MBE products for RHEC.