Foreword

Consumption as an important way to achieve sustainable development，it plays an critical role in the process of international sustainable development. In 1987，the World Commission on Development and Environment published the report of “Our Common Future”，and put forward the concept of sustainable development，it clearly stated，“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”，which means reasonable consumption. In 2002，the United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development reached the “Johannesburg agreement”，for the first time explicitly put forward the concept of sustainable consumption，and then launched the “Marrakech Process”，to push the development of sustainable consumption all over the world，international organizations and developed countries did more practice to promote sustainable consumption，and laid an important foundation for the promotion and implementation of sustainable consumption worldwide.

With the rapid improvement of living standards in China，the ownership of household appliances and cars is increasing quickly in past two decades，further pushing up the residential energy demand. According to the experience of developed countries，the proportion of residential energy will surpass industrial energy consumption，so the residential sector will be a key factor in determining whether emission reduction target could be completed or not. Based on McKinsey Company's abatement cost estimation，the cost of abatement in residential sector is very low，even negative，so the mitigation of residential energy is economical. Combined with China's stage of development and the strategic needs of the energy saving，we have chosen carbon emissions from residential energy use as study object，and discuss policy choices，in order to provide a reference for the mitigation policy design in the future.

Compared with developed countries，China's sustainable consumption has a big gap，and its practice is in very slow progress，the carbon reduction policy neglects the household sector and relative support is very little. China's regional imbalances also exacerbate the difficulty of formulating policies to address climate change.The key to the development of emission reduction policiesis to make all people are given adequate resources and opportunities to achieve mitigation of climate change and reach reasonable cost-sharing is. The household Energy demand includes two major parts：First is direct residential energy；the second is the indirect energy of the household consumption. Accordingly，the decarbonation of household sector also divided into low-carbon consumption and low-carbon development of residential energy. For low carbon consumption，its focus is to explore the ways of how to achieve this，the book analysis the development of low-carbon consumption abroad，and forward low carbon community building，low-carbon infrastructure and low-carbon behavior to promote the development of low-carbon consumption，taking into account the China's regional unbalanced development，low-carbon consumption related work should be combined with the process of new urbanization，to carried out step by step，to promote the consumption of low-carbon transformation，we need to establish a sound policy framework including mandatory，incentive and guidance policies . By international comparison，we can predict that China's residential energy scale and structure will undergo significant changes in the future，meanwhile，the carbon emission of household sector has own unique characteristics，its emission reduction is more complex than the industrial sector，which put forward higher requirements for selection and design of policy. This book assesses the impact of the major reduction policies on social welfare，and find the regulate on consumption carbon emissions is easier to solve social justice issues，to make the case study of Beijing's residential energy，and find there is a big gap on carbon emissions among different income families，the current emission reduction policies only consider the cost-effectiveness in the policy evaluation，but without considering social welfare and climate justice，this book proposes to consider the issue of emission reduction within the framework of sustainable development，based on the principles of maximization of social welfare and climate justice to determine the policy targets，and choose the policy to protect the development rights of vulnerable families，Finally，the book presents a proposal to develop low-carbon energy development strategies and low-carbon consumption. The book's main conclusions are as follows：

First，the result of case studies of Beijing household residential energy have shown that，currently，carbon emissions gap among different income groups is significant，per capita annual emissions of high-income families is approximately 6.88 tons of CO₂，as for low-income families is only 1.02 tons of CO₂，per capita emissions of rich is 6.75 times that of the poor. Differences in income and household consumption patterns contribute to the carbon emissions gap，the average annual electricity consumption of the high-income families is 12.27 times of low-income families，and is 6.86 times that of low-income families in transport energy. The irrational energy consumption pattern should be taken into account in the design of emission reduction policies.

Second，the choice of emission reduction policies has significant impact on residential energy and social welfare. The regressive emission reduction policies not only lead to distribution dilemma，but also have impact on the distribution pattern of the carbon emissions. Universal subsidies of residential energy will benefit high-income families. Regressivity of the carbon tax will cause low-income people to undertake greater negative impact. The promotion of renewable energy in household sector，or improve energy efficiency standards will limit the choice of low-income families；the social welfare impact of energy efficiency subsidy will depend on who receive the money. Energy consumption patterns and the demand elasticity of dwelling energy and transport energy is significant different，taking carbon tax for transport energy can be effective to achieve emission reduction targets without causing the social problem. The use of standard control can get better reduction of residential energy consumption，but need to address the retrofit of the stock of housing. From the definition of emission rights，through personal carbon trading directly can be the most effective way to protect low-income families，but the policy feasibility is weak；by progressive carbon tax or progressive pricing is more feasible，but has smaller effect on income distribution improvement.

Third，based on the principle of maximization of social welfare to design and optimize the emission reduction policies. The emission reduction in household sector faces market failure，behavior failure and regulatory failure，energy supply monopoly also increase the difficulty of emission reduction. It is necessary to make policy mix to achieve the emission reduction，economic and social distributional objectives. Simple carbon pricing or market-oriented price reforms will cause social vulnerable families to bear the unreasonable policies cost，does not comply with the principle of social welfare maximization. Personal carbon trading can solve social distribution problem，but the implementation is very hard，progressive carbon tax is facing the same question. As the demand elasticity of dwelling energy consumption is low，standard control combined with progressive pricing can reduce emission effectively. We proposed a pilot carbon tax for private car petrol consumption，and recycle the revenue to improve the public transport service system. To offset the negative impact of energy price reform and reduction for low-income families，targeted energy efficiency subsidies will be needed，ensuring their access to basic energy services.

The innovation of this book is to make systematic study for the low-carbon of household sector，from the two ways of household consumption and residential energy to explore the energy saving and carbon reduction，using the methods of social welfare analysis to design and choose residential energy policy，to reveals the residential energy consumption patterns and their policy implications by case studies. In the future，this study can be deepen，for example，due to strong heterogeneity of families and consumers，and leading to very different consumption behavior patterns，this should be considered in policy design；for the specific mitigation policies impact on social welfare，we can do more quantitative analysis and evaluation on the basis of sound data，so as to improve the scientific basis of policy.

This book is suitable for the government，energy，consumption and sustainable development researchers，universities and other public interested in sustainable development issues to read.