Situations and challenges of household energy consumption in Chinese small towns

• A large survey of household energy consumption in Chinese small towns was conducted.
• Current situation and key problems in household energy consumption in Chinese small towns were analyzed.
• Making full use of biomass energy for space heating in northern China was proposed.

A large scale survey of household energy consumption in Chinese small towns was conducted to obtain the fundamental data and analyze the key problems. Based on the survey results, the total annual household energy consumption in Chinese small towns is around 156 million tons of coal equivalence (tce) (4.6 × 109 GJ). The breakdowns include 74 million tons of raw coal (1.5 × 109 GJ), 11 million tons of firewood (0.2 × 109 GJ), 38 million tons of straw (0.6 × 109 GJ), 5.7 million tons of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) (0.3 × 109 GJ), 8478 million m3 natural gas (NG) (0.3 × 109 GJ), 1.5 million tons of charcoal (0.5 × 108 GJ) and 160 billion kW h electricity. Space heating accounts for the most proportion of household energy consumption in northern small towns in whole country. Coal is widely used for space heating. There will be a big challenge on energy and environment with a large number of migration from rural areas to small towns during the urbanization. To avoid significant increase of energy and pollutant emissions, making full use of biomass energy for household space heating in small towns is proposed based on the analysis of supply and demand of biomass resources. The results obtained from this study could also provide references to guide the development in small towns in other countries, particularly the developing world during the process of rapid urbanization.