Rural household energy consumption and its impacts on eco-environment in Tibet: Taking Taktse county as an example

Abstract

Rural energy consumption causes tremendous damage to eco-environment and leads to aberration from a socio-economic point of view in many developing countries. Due to its unique physical features, there is a high potential of renewable energies in Tibet and traditional biomass energies such as cattle dung, firewood and crop residues play very important roles in local household energy usage. This special consumption structure do harm not only to eco-environment but to rural residents themselves as well. Basing on the field study and household questionnaires in June 2006 in Taktse, the article analyzed the rural household energy supply and consumption structure, and its impacts on eco-environment, health and social aspects of 2005 in this case study county. Results show that traditional biomass energy takes up to almost 70%, which leads to a series of serious eco-environment problems such as deforestation, soil erosion, grassland degradation, desertification, and some other problems such as human beings diseases and loss of time for education and recreation. Besides natural backgrounds, cultural tradition, population growth, economy reason and policy guidance are other main driving forces of the input-output flow of energy-environment relationship in rural Tibet. At last, a multilevel policy suggestion of making less use of traditional biomass and invest more resources in solar energy and biogas are put forward. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.