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Abstract: Besides technical measures, occupants’ behavior is one of the most important issues with respect to energy efficiency in households. This paper will discuss the relationship between electricity consumption and household lifestyle and evaluate the energy-saving potential by improving occupants’ behavior in domestic life through energy-saving education. After 124 households in three typical residential buildings in Hangzhou city of China being selected as research subjects, a series of surveys were conducted: (1) recording of the monthly electricity uses of all subject households from March 2007 to July 2008; (2) energy-saving education to the half of the households before July 2008; (3) a comprehensive survey about the household lifestyle of all subject households in the beginning of August 2008. By comparison analysis of the survey data, major findings are as follows: (1) residential electricity consumption will increase continually in the next years in China, because of the improvement of people''s living standard and more dependency on electric appliances; (2) improving occupants’ behavior in domestic life can save more than 10% household electricity use; and (3) some effort on residential energy savings should be shifted from technological measures to improving occupants’ behavior in ordinary domestic life. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Questionnaire surveys and subjective evaluations on residential environment were performed in order to grasp the main factors of residential environment of small local cities. The suitable evaluation index system was established, and the regional residential environment characteristics and personal residential preference types were analyzed, so that their influence on residential environment evaluation could be grasped. The results can be applied to the residential environment planning, construction and monitoring of local cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The current efforts and technologies on energy efficiency seem unable to hold back the increasing momentum of the household energy consumption per unit of China, which has been on the increase since 2000. Usually, this phenomenon is simply attributed to the demand for more comfortable household lifestyle due to the current rapid economic development of China. However, the latent cause—rebound effect has long been ignored in the household energy efficiency of China, while it has been analyzed deeply and recognized widely all over the world. This article studies the rebound effect in the household energy efficiency of China and its related negative influence on the energy demand. A high rebound effect of at least 30% in the household energy efficiency of China is presumed by reference to the rebound effects of other countries. Finally, five feasible ways are summarized to mitigate the rebound effect and their values are analyzed respectively: (1) develop renewable energy resources, (2) increase energy prices, (3) improve energy efficiency, (4) build rational energy prices system, and (5) improve consumer behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatially land use models are indispensable for sustainable land use planning. This study demonstrates a combined Markov–Cellular Automata model to analyze temporal change and spatial distribution of land use stressed by natural and socioeconomic factors in Saga, Japan. Firstly, area change and spatial distribution of land use are calculated using GIS technology, and then the transition among different land use types is analyzed to obtain the transformation matrices during a period of 1976–2006. Meanwhile, an integration evaluation procedure with natural and socioeconomic data is used to generate the transition potential maps. Secondly, using the transition potential maps and transition matrices, a Markov–Cellular Automata model is established to simulate spatial distribution of land use in 2006. Finally, we use this Markov–Cellular Automata model to forecast the future land use changes during the period of 2015–2042. As a consequence, area change simulation predicts a continuing downward trend in agriculture land and forestland areas, as well as an upward trend in built-up areas; spatial distribution simulation indicates that built-up land will expand toward suburban regions, and land use of urban center is at the decline stage. Hence, if the current trends keep constant without holistic sustainable development measures, severe land use decline will ensue. The study is anticipated to help local authorities better understand and address a complex land use system, and develop the improved land use management strategies that can better balance urban expansion and ecological conservation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: At present, environmental issues associated with rapid economic development are becoming critical concerns that arouse government''s and people''s particular attention. A large amount of influencing factors and especially their complicated interactions have always thrown confused insights into assessing the dynamic evolvement and sustainable development of urban economy–resource–environment (ERE) system and programming the developing strategies. A combination of system dynamics (SD) and geographic information system (GIS) is expected to explicitly understand the synergic interaction and feedback among a variety of influencing factors in time and space, since SD model can extend the spatial analysis functions of GIS to realize both dynamic simulation and trend prediction of an ERE system development. According to connotation and framework of sustainable development, this study proposes a dynamic combination method of SD–GIS to model and evaluate the urban development in Chongqing city of China suffering from depletion of resource and degradation of environment. To compare different policy inclinations with regard to potential ERE effects, typical scenarios (current, resource, technology and environment scenarios) are designed by adjusting the parameters in the model and changing the specification of some variables. Integrated assessment results indicate that the current ERE system of Chongqing is not sustainable; environment scenario is more effective to sustainable development of urban ERE system in a long run. Under the considerations of development features and regional differences, as well as regular discipline on urbanization, a coordinated combination of environmental, resource and technology scenarios is anticipated to realize sustainable development of urban ERE system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Energy-efficient renovation had been accepted widely as the best solution for aging residential buildings. In order to guide such real projects in China and maximize the benefits in energy, environmental and economic fields from these activities, this article developed a methodology to assist decision-makers to design energy-efficient renovation plan in the early stage of design phase, and used a case study to demonstrate how to apply it. Following it, a suitable energy-efficient renovation plan, integrating all effective and available energy-saving measures, could be put forward for the subject building, and its effects on reduction of energy consumption, CO2 emission and cost be evaluated accurately. The results showed that from the viewpoint of reducing energy consumption and CO2 emission, energy-efficient renovation was worth being implemented to upgrade the existing residential buildings in China, but from the economic view, governments should provide certain subsidy for such real projects and increase electricity price. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]