Household Operational Energy Consumption in Urban China: A Multilevel Analysis on Jinan

With decades of economic growth and socio-economic transformation, China’s residential sector has seen rapid expansion in energy consumption, and is now the second largest energy consuming sector in the country. Faced with challenges of energy resource depletion and natural environment deterioration, China has been intensifying its efforts on energy conservation and emissions reductions in the residential sector. In this thesis, I present an analysis of household operational energy consumption in urban China through empirical evidence from Jinan, the capital city of eastern China’s Shandong Province. With data from a survey of approximately 4,000 households and spatial analysis of 23 urban neighborhoods, I summarize key household socio-economic and demographic characteristics, dwelling unit physical attributes, appliance ownership, and usage control, as well as neighborhood characteristics of density, mixed use, solar gain, and wind flow. Based on a multilevel regression model, I examine the household, neighborhood, and cross-level interaction effects on in-home operational energy consumption. The research reveals that operational usage accounts for a predominantly large portion of total residential energy consumption in Jinan, and operational energy consumption patterns vary greatly across households in different neighborhood typologies. The multilevel analysis shows that six household characteristics are identified as having a positive, statistically significant relationship with greater energy usage: higher household income, presence of three or more adults and/or a child, larger dwelling unit area, and ownership of one or more air conditioners. Among neighborhood characteristics, higher floor area ratio is found to associate with lower operational energy consumption. In cross-level interaction effects, higher building function mix may weaken the positive effect of household income on operational energy consumption, and higher neighborhood porosity is correlated with higher energy consumption for households living on top floors and/or with electric heating. Thesis Supervisor: P. Christopher Zegras Title: Ford Career Development Associate Professor of Transportation and Urban Planning Thesis Reader: Dennis M. Frenchman Title: Leventhal Professor of Urban Design and Planning