Which are the factors that may explain the differences in water and energy consumptions in urban and rural environments?

Convergence in renewable energy consumption and their influencing factors across regions: evidence from convergence algorithm approach

This study examines the convergence in renewable energy consumption over the period 2000-2018 by using a convergence algorithm developed by Phillips and Sul. We used 183 countries which were sub-divided into five regions, namely: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA); Middle East and North Africa (MENA); Europe and Central Asia (ECA); East and South Asia and the Pacific (ESAP); and America. The possible influencing determinants of the convergence/divergence clubs for the regions were also investigated by utilising multinomial logit regression. The determinants were majorly classified into macroeconomic, socio-economic, and institutional quality variables, which were computed via principal component analysis by using six governance indicators. The results show an absence of panel convergence and a weak speed of convergence for the regions. The final club formation results obtained from the iteration procedure show that 6 clubs (for SSA), 2 (for MENA and ECA), 5 (for ESAP), and 3 (for America) were formed for the regions. The determinants of renewable energy consumption play both significant and insignificant roles in the likelihood of a country belonging to a particular convergence club in each of the regions. This study found that at the regional level, the process of convergence in renewable energy consumption is yet to echo desirable emanations of renewable energy consumption policies sharing similar characteristics, but the narrative differs when clustering algorithms form clubs for each region. This implies that at regional levels, achieving convergence clubs in renewable energy consumption for environmental sustainability is possible, most especially when realistic policies around macroeconomic, socio-economic and institutional quality variables are taken into account.

Application of a Water Supply-Demand Balance Model to Set Priorities for Improvements in Water Supply Systems: A Case Study from the Koshi River Basin, Nepal

Water scarcity is one of the leading challenges for sustainable development in the context of climate change, particularly for agriculturally reliant countries. Inadequate water supplies tend to generate environmental and health issues. Improvements in water supply systems should give priority to the region with the most severe mismatch between water supply and demand. To set priorities for the improvement of water supply systems, this study proposed a water supply-demand balance model to quantify the water supply-demand gap in the Koshi River basin and compared it with the traditional water vulnerability model. The results suggested that (1) the water supply-demand balance model had good applicability to the Koshi River basin and was superior to traditional models in identifying the region with the most severe mismatch; (2) the shortage of agricultural water was much more serious than that of domestic water in the basin; (3) the largest supply-demand gap of domestic water was in Tarai and that of agricultural water was in the hill areas; and (4) Four districts, including Lalitpur, Mahottari, Makwanpur, and Solukhumbu, were found to be the most water-stressed regions and priority should be given to them. Based on these findings, the priority setting in the improvement of water supply systems and adaptation strategies for mitigating water stress from the perspectives of the government, communities, and households were presented. It helps design water supply systems that match heterogeneous demands and optimize systems operation. Targeted improvements in water supply systems can make limited funds available to benefit more residents.

The status of household heating in northern China: a field survey in towns and villages

Household heating in China has been ignored in the formulation of national energy plans until concerns with severe air pollution emerged. The government has started to implement the clean heating with ambitious targets. However, the specific heating status is not clear, especially in rural areas, thus leading to significant obstacles to policy formulation and air pollution control. In order to understand the current heating conditions and heating behaviors of households in more detail, we conduct a field survey of household heating in towns and villages across northern China from December 2017 to March 2018. The survey results show that more than 75% of rural households still rely on traditional heating methods, such as coal, firewood, kang, and a simple stove. Household income, awareness of using heating fuels, and government subsidies may have a certain impact on heating fuel choice. In addition, approximately 34.6% of rural households do not use any housing insulation measures, which is also of concern when focusing on the heating quality. Lastly, considering the huge cost of rural household clean energy transition, we suggest that only a few regions are encouraged to turn to electricity or natural gas for heating, while most other regions transition to using clean coal and attach more importance to improving the quality of heating stoves.

Anthropic space and design for all. New knowledge paths for urban planning strategies

Nowadays city environment shows the presence of a mixed variety of elements, as natural, semi natural and anthropic components that build up both structure and connections of the urban context. This specific structure shapes and directs space and its functions strictly connected with their sustainable potential uses and sustainable development opportunities. The lack of rules and proper planning methods produces inefficient use conditions by resident citizens, entropy, functions' reduction of ecological networks and deep environmental impacts. The consequence comes out to be a great widespread life quality decrease in urban areas. These thoughts lead the authors to rethink the definition first and then the place concept own interpretation, as a theoretical reference approach and in a particular way of the urban place, as an anthropic action useful in a multidimensional relationship analysis. Based on these considerations, the aim of the paper is that to introduce design for all as an efficient and effective planning action tool able to get sustainable operating strategies to match both people needs and urban system quality of life protection and enhancement in a long term timeline analysis.

Research on the synergy of urban system operation-Based on the perspective of urban metabolism

Cities have been posing threats to local environment due to intensive human activities. Disordered urban metabolism can lead to unhealthy urban system operation. Studying urban metabolism can identify the characteristics and structure of urban system operations, thereby promoting sustainable development. We construct an ecological network to model the energy/material flows among the sectors of urban system in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing, which are the most representative cities of China. Ecological network analysis was introduced to survey the system's characteristic of structure and function. Results show that Shanghai's urban metabolic system has the highest synergism with a value of 5.04, followed by Beijing, Chongqing, and Tianjin. Different cities vary considerably in terms of the relationships among the sectors. In Beijing and Chongqing, there is mutualistic relationship between environment and primary industry. Transportation forms a mutualistic relationship with tertiary industry and other sectors Only in Chongqing. The good relationships between primary industry and construction are merely seen in Beijing and Shanghai. However, some relationships are similar in the four cities, for instance, all the relationships between primary industry and advanced industry, and between construction and advanced industry are competition; All the relationships between environment and transportation are mutualism. We further explored the network stability and found that the studied urban systems are all located in a stable status relatively. Our research could reveal the synergy of urban operation, and provide a theoretical basis for optimizing urban metabolic processes by regulating the flows and guidance for sustainable urban development.

A Comparative Analysis of Residential Energy Consumption in Urban and Rural China: Determinants and Regional Disparities

Residential energy consumption (REC) has become increasingly important in constructing an energy-saving and environment-friendly society in China. The main purpose of this study is to provide a more in-depth analysis of the determinants of REC from an urban-rural segregation perspective, and quantify the contributions of individual determinants to the regional disparities of REC. Based on the extended STIRPAT (the stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology) model, seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) estimation is employed to examine the impacts of various determinants of urban REC per capita (URECP) and rural REC per capita (RRECP) in a sample of China’s 30 provinces over the period 2007–2016. Then, following the results of SUR, this paper tries to explore the reasons for interprovincial disparities of URECP and RRECP by using the Shapley value decomposition. The empirical results show that income level and heating lead to an increase in URECP, while other factors, including the share of natural gas, average temperature, child dependency ratio and gross dependency ratio, significantly decrease URECP. In terms of RRECP, it is shown that old-age dependency ratio, income level and the share of coal consumption positively influence RRECP, while average temperature has a negative effect on RRECP. Specially, the effect of gross dependency ratio on RRECP is positive, indicating the non-working-age population causes more energy use than the working-age population in rural areas. According to the Shapley decomposition, rather than social-economic variables, climate and heating factors contribute the most to the interprovincial differences in URECP. Furthermore, it is found that income level is the most important factor accounting for inter-provincial differences in RRECP. The findings of this research are of great interest, not only to scholars in REC-related fields, but also to decision makers.