China Energy Outlook 2020 - Flipbook - Page 29
households, growing about 20% per year between 2010 and 2018 and reaching more than 65%
saturation in 2018. The increase in appliance ownership has driven an increase in annual per
capita electricity consumption in households, which grew by 45 times between 1983 and 2016.
Figure 1-11. Urban & Rural Ownership of Key Household Appliances (1990-2018)
Source: NBS, various years (a); NBS, 2019b.
Note: 2013 and 2014 data are from the urban household income and living status survey conducted by the
National Bureau of Statistics.
Transport Sector
Energy use to transport China’s residents as well as raw materials (e.g. coal), manufactured
products, and other goods has increased significantly, growing from consumption of 28.95 Mtce
- a 5% share - in 1980 to 368.54 Mtce – a 9% share - in 2018, or 9.7% on an adjusted basis.10
Drivers of transport sector energy use include the share of passenger and freight travel by
various modes as well as the vintage and efficiency of the various travel modes.
Historically, freight in China was transported primarily by rail (Figure 1-12), but with the
expansion of river and coastal ports since the 1970s, water transport—the most efficient in
terms of energy use per tonne-kilometer travelled—has expanded rapidly. Today, water
transport (50% is international ocean freight transport) dominates freight transport with about
a 50% share of total freight tonne-kilometers. The share of freight transported by rail dropped
from 40% in 1990 to 14% in 2018. Early data on road freight haulage is incomplete, but with
expanded statistical coverage after 2005, the importance of road freight has become apparent.
As rail lines often running at capacity, road movement has become more important, particularly
for shipments of crucial materials such as coal. Rail freight today remains primarily for bulk
materials such as coal, cement, and grain, but accounts for only 14% of total shipments.
10
The values presented here are the official figures for the “Transportation, Storage and Post,” which understates
the actual amount used for transport services. In China, gasoline, which is almost entirely used in vehicles and thus
for transportation services, is allocated to the sectors in which it is consumed instead of all to the transport sector.
Figure 1-17, Composition of China’s Petroleum Use (2017) below provides an adjusted view.
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