Abstract:

Energy shortage is becoming one of the major problems of global resource and environment.As many of energy problems are related to human activities,it is necessary to identify the impact of human factors on energy consumption so as to develop and implement sustainable energy policy accordingly.In this paper,taking STIRPAT model as an analysis tool and energy consumption of Gansu Province from 1991 to 2009 as an indicator,the environmental impact of human factors was decomposed.The results showed that the increased wealth and urbanization may increase the promotion of environmental degradation,and environmental impact of urbanization is 278 times of wealth.Another important finding in the empirical study is that there is no evidence of an environmental Kuznets curve for energy consumption within the range of calculated data,and the curve is still ascending.The diversification of consumption structure was conductive to reduce energy consumption,and its impact on the environment was slightly lower than that of increased wealth effect.Finally,the advantage and disadvantage of STIRPAT model was concluded,and we suggested that the mechanism of related factors on environmental impact need to be studied deeply