Search

In international business literature, studies purport that population growth leads to high energy consumption. There is, however, no study that measures energy use as a composite index in the region. This paper fills this gap in literature. Across the board, in all five countries, population growth is positive. However, if population growth has a significant, large, and negative correlation with the growth of total energy use and per capita energy use, it implies that the overpopulation argument is not supported across the board in the so called overpopulated developing economies of South Asia. However, if we look at the aggregate growth rate of energy use, it is positive in all five countries. Clearly the growth in per capita energy use is responsible for pushing the aggregate energy use disproportionately. This implies that individual behavioural patterns in energy use are responsible for growth in energy use in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Hainan province is the only tropical and island province in China, with the unique climatic and geographical features. It has a different energy performance in public buildings from those in the inland areas. This paper investigated the current situation of energy consumption of the sampled public buildings, including 26 hotels, 24 office buildings and 7 department stores, through analyzing utility billing data, on-site survey and measurement, and site operational records. The breakdowns of energy consumption found out that the electricity dominated the energy consumption for all the sampled buildings and the air conditioning system played a key role in the energy consumption of major building services. By analyzing the main factors for building energy consumption, the annual average energy use indexes were calculated to be 141.63kWh/m2, 87.70kWh/m2, and 166.95kWh/m2 for hotels, office buildings and department stores, respectively. Besides, the comparison between Hainan province and other areas revealed that the building energy consumption of this tropical province was at a low level. Because indoor environment quality can influence the health and work efficiency of humans in buildings, field tests on the indoor environment quality were also carried out, and the performance of indoor environment quality was rated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]