PNAS: Aging, Intergenerational Change, and Urban Energy Consumption in China

Figure 1 Mechanism of the impact of population transition on energy consumption

Figure 2 Prediction result
.

With the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (approval number: 71622014), the team of Professor Wei Chu of the School of Applied Economics of Chinese University and researcher Cao Guiying of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) collaborated to quantitatively assess the impact of population aging and intergenerational change on residents' energy demand, and carried out predictive analysis
for different scenarios 。 The research paper, titled "Aging, generational shifts, and energy consumption in urban China," was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Nations on September 6, 2022 States of America
).

Ageing is a common challenge
facing countries around the world.

Taking energy demand as the research object, the research team constructs a theoretical framework for more accurately portraying and capturing the impact of age and intergenerational change on demand (Figure 1), using intergenerational effects to characterize heterogeneous cognitive norms and behavior patterns of each generation, and using age effects to characterize different behavior patterns
in individual life cycles 。 Based on the microsurvey data of urban residents in China, an empirical estimation of the age-period-cohort (APC) was constructed, and the impact of population factors on
China's energy consumption in different scenarios in the future was assessed by combining the urban aging population measured by the multistate projection model 。 The findings suggest that there are large differences in energy preferences between ages and generations, with older and younger generations tending to be energy-intensive consumers, leading to higher energy consumption in aging societies, with the elderly population accounting for 17 to 26 percent of total residential energy consumption by 2050 (Figure 2).