Abstract
Energy consumption is a chief contributor to climate change, which increases as households use more air conditioning (AC) in response to climate change. As such, climate change–induced energy consumption is expected to increase more drastically in fast-emerging economies, where the rapidly increasing household income and urbanization promote the large-scale adoption of ACs. Based on data on daily household electricity consumption in the Zhejiang Province of China, this study estimates the household temperature response functions. In particular, we consider urban and rural households with and without AC to chart their various cooling demand and consumption behavior, typically indicated by U-shaped temperature-response functions. Compared to rural households and those without AC, urban households and those with AC exhibit steeper response functions at both high and low temperatures. Based on these estimates, we simulate the household electricity consumption under climate change scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The simulation results reveal that (1) under constant urbanization and AC adoption rates, the electricity consumption in the residential sector will increase by 5.04–16.37% because of climate change; (2) as the AC adoption rate increases from 82.50 to 95.00% in urban areas and from 74.40 to 85.00% in rural areas, the household electricity consumption in Zhejiang Province will further increase by 0.52–1.05%; (3) combined with the increase of urbanization from 68.73 to 80.00%, the increase rate of annual electricity consumption of the residential sector will further rise to 25.60–55.79%. These findings highlight the vicious cycle of climate change and cooling along with the challenges encountered by electricity grids.
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Data availability
The datasets analyzed herein are not publicly available because of the data confidentiality agreement with the State Grid Corporation of China, but they are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Notes
IEA, Global Energy Review: CO2 Emissions in 2020, https://www.iea.org/articles/global-energy-review-co2-emissions-in-2020)
Source: China Statistical Yearbook 2020
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser
The ACs studied herein include appliances with both heating and cooling functions, which are common among the investigated samples.
Source: Zhejiang Statistical Yearbook 2022
The observations with extreme load are excluded based on two criteria. First, the households report the operation of restaurants or accommodation/shops in their houses during the survey. Second, the average daily electricity consumption exceeds 100 kWh, which is nearly 20 times that of the sample.
Herein, the four seasons are classified according to the "Division of Climatic Seasons" issued by the China Meteorological Administration (https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbDetailed?id=5DDA8B9DC86C18DEE05397BE0A0A95A7). Specifically, the onset of summer is marked by a daily average temperature of greater than 22°C for five consecutive days. Conversely, the onset of winter is confirmed by a daily average temperature of less than 10°C for five consecutive days. Thus, according to the daily average temperature in Zhejiang in 2017 and considering the comparability between the seasons, we regard every 3 months as a season, i.e., summer prevails from June to August, whereas winter spans from December to February.
The NEX-GDDP provides air-temperature forecast data from 21 General Circulation Models for both RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. The projections detail the forecasts of daily maximum and minimum temperatures with a spatial resolution of 0.25° × 0.25°. Based on these data, we utilize the average of maximum and minimum temperatures as a proxy for daily average temperature and calculate the mean temperature of 21 models to develop the scenarios applicable herein.
In total, 15 dummy variables are used to represent 16 orientations.
According to China’s Regulation on Public Holidays for National Annual Festivals and Memorial Days, we include New Year, Spring Festival, Tomb-sweeping Day, Labor Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, and National Day in the variable Holidayt.
The lower limit represents the response of households without AC, whereas the upper limit indicates the response of households with AC.
IEA’s The Future of Cooling in China Report predicts that by 2030 as many as 85% of households are expected to own at least one AC unit.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would appreciate the valuable comments from the editor and two anonymous referees that helped to improve the paper significantly. The authors would like to thank Fei Chen from the Economics and Technology Research Institute at State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Corporation for his survey support.
Funding
The authors received funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72141308, 71703163), the Research Funds of Renmin University of China (Grant No. 22XNLG12, 17XNS001, 11XNL004), and the Major Innovation & Planning Interdisciplinary Platform for the “Double-First Class” Initiative.
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Cui wrote the original draft, modeled the electricity response function, performed the climate change scenario analysis, and visualized all the figures in the article. Xie proposed the concept of this study and significantly contributed toward writing, reviewing, and editing this article. Zheng proposed the concept of this study and acquired relevant data.
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Cui, J., Xie, L. & Zheng, X. Climate change, air conditioning, and urbanization—evidence from daily household electricity consumption data in China. Climatic Change 176, 106 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-023-03589-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-023-03589-y