Professor Yu Biying and master student Yang Xiaojuan from the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research of Beijing Institute of Technology jointly published a paper on the causality between time use behavior and household energy consumption in Ecological Economics.

　　At present, the energy consumption of the world's residential sector (excluding private transportation) has accounted for 21.9% of the world's total energy consumption, and has maintained a growth trend. In order to achieve the global energy saving and emission reduction goals, it is necessary to discuss and promote effective ways for residents to save energy and reduce emissions. Resident energy consumption is generated to meet the daily activities of residents, and is determined by the four dimensions of residents' activity structure, activity time, activity space, and equipment used to complete various activities, that is, residents' time use behavior. Based on the perspective of time utilization, this paper studies the energy consumption of residents, starting from the demand of activities, when and where residents carry out what activities, the equipment needed for activities and the energy consumption generated by the equipment in the end, it can describe the whole process from the initial demand generation to the final energy consumption, which provides a solution for identifying the way to fundamentally reduce energy consumption. Therefore, this study attempts to explain the formation mechanism of residents' energy consumption from the perspective of time utilization, proposes the methods and ideas of residential energy consumption accounting based on the perspective of time utilization, and explores the impact of changes in different dimensions on residents' energy consumption. Based on the empirical background of China, this paper expands the time use survey framework adopted by developed countries, investigates the time use behavior of Chinese residents from the aspects of activity structure, time and space distribution, peers, equipment required for activities, and finally collects the effective data of 1025 family members' time use surveys. Based on the data, this paper reveals the characteristics of urban and rural residents' activity patterns and their energy consumption; Identify the high energy consumption activities, high energy consumption time, high energy consumption places, high energy consumption equipment types and high energy consumption groups; Further evaluate the energy-saving effects of the changes in the activity space caused by ICT technology and the changes in equipment fuel and efficiency.

　　The results show that in 2015, Chinese residents spent 64.8% of their time in their homes per day. Their per capita annual energy consumption was approximately 492.5 kgce, and the average annual energy consumption of Chinese households was approximately 1520.6 kgce. Among them, cooking activities consume the most energy; 7 to 9 o'clock, 11 to 13 o'clock and 17 to 19 o'clock are the main periods of high energy consumption; Sleep and rest, food preparation and cleaning, use of media for leisure, work, meals and other cultural and entertainment activities are the six major energy-intensive activities; Women, unemployed persons, female civil servants, rural women, residents under the age of 15 or 60-64 years of age with annual household income after taxation of more than 210,000 are high energy-consuming groups; Firewood stoves, gas stoves, heating stoves, natural gas heating equipment/gas floor heating, water heaters, televisions, etc. are all high-energy-consuming equipment. The energy consumption can be reduced by 3.5% ~ 13.2% by promoting energy-efficient equipment and eliminating the use of equipment in non-main activities; In addition, even if the travel energy consumption of related activities is avoided, the increasing popularity of online activities and services (E-life) may increase household energy consumption by about 18.1%.

Research framework for analyzing residential energy consumption based on a time use perspective

Time use behavior and residential energy consumption flow for an average Chinese resident on the survey day (unit for time: hours; unit for energy: kgce)

Original information: 

Causal Effect of Time-Use Behavior on Residential Energy Consumption in China

Biying Yu^a,b,c,d,⁎, Xiaojuan Yang^{a, c}, Qingyu Zhao^{a, b}, Jinxiao Tan^{a, b,c} 

^a Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China 

^b School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China 

^c Beijing Key Lab of Energy Economics and Environmental Management, Beijing 100081, China dSustainable Development Research Institute for Economy and Society of Beijing, Beijing 100081, China