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ABSTRACT
Motivated by the evolution of rural electrification as more than just a project to drive modern development but to further effect environmental conservation, this paper offers an examination of the energy transition framework that guides such conclusions. Here, I present a study on household energy use in a village where fuelwood and electricity are easily available and accessible to households. Such conditions allow an examination of the energy ladder where fuel use is not influenced by resource limitations. Based on qualitative and quantitative data collected at the household level, study findings reveal a pattern of fuel accumulation in which the use of electricity and modern technologies are utilized alongside continued fuelwood consumption. Despite increases in household electricity use, the study shows little evidence of electricity displacing fuelwood use; thus, challenging the inevitability of modernization and its potential to work for environmental conservation.
Keywords: household energy use, energy ladder, forest conservation, China
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INTRODUCTION
In the 1960s China adopted a strategy of employing small-scale energy development projects in rural areas as part of Mao Zedong's modern vision of industrializing the countryside. Since then these projects have moved beyond their historic production-oriented beginnings to encompass not only economic and social, but also environmental aims. In southwest China, the Chinese government has touted small-scale hydro-electric projects as an effective means of forest conservation - claiming that even where forest rehabilitation efforts had failed, this strategy proved successful (Mao & Xiang, 1991). The basic premise is that reliance on biomass fuels has detrimental effects on the environment (Smil, 1993), both shaping and supporting a fuelwood crisis. By providing households with access to an alternative fuel from which they can reduce dependence on biomass resources, rural electrification offers itself as a potential strategy for decreasing pressure on forestlands. Based on the framework outlined by the energy ladder this logic is sound. However, the energy ladder does not always reflect actual household fuel use dynamics, thus presenting major implications for the use of rural energy development as a strategy for forest conservation.
The energy ladder provides a theoretical framework for explaining the transition from traditional to modern fuels and devices inside households. From the bottom rung of inefficient traditional fuels (e.g. crop residues, fuelwood,...