This paper presents the details and results of an energy model of a non-electrified rural village. The model itself was developed with MARKAL/TIMES, a modeling and optimization tool. Much of the data used in the model is based on data obtained from surveys and electricity loggers, while some is based on the authors' own assumptions (e.g. the number of households in the village).

This paper looks into the overall energy pattern in rural China and the possible reasons behind based on an assessment of available data sources. Commercial energy consumption by rural residents is disproportionately lower than that by their urban counterparts. Moreover, biological matters are the dominant source of household fuels in rural areas. Variations in energy consumption are closely related to differences in income, access to energy sources, structures of local economy and geographic/climatic conditions. Information on non-commercial energy consumption is incomplete and additional sample survey is required to gather details of rural energy consumption for specification and verification.

About 2.4 billion people rely on traditional biomass, mainly for cooking and heating (IEA, 2002). Essentially all of those users of traditional fuels reside in developing countries, and most of them live in rural areas; low incomes and the lack of access to alternative, modern fuels explain their choice of traditional energy supply. By the late 1990s, IEA (1998) estimated that biomass accounted for approximately 14 percent of final energy consumption, roughly on par with electricity (14 percent). It is likely that the fraction of total energy supplied by biomass will decline in the future as traditional energy carriers are supplanted by the modern movers such as electricity. This paper provides an overview of that "energy transition" from traditional to commercial fuels from the perspective of available macro-economic data. Based on the long time series data available for the United States it suggests some basic patterns in the energy transition, and it examines the transition under way in several major developing countries. It offers a simple regression model of the transition and suggests topics for further research, including an improved regression model.

Energy development, interpreted broadly to mean increased provision and use of energy services, is an integral part of enhanced economic development. Advanced industrialized societies use more energy per unit of economic output and far more energy per capita than poorer societies, especially those still in a preindustrial state. Energy use per unit of output does seem to decline over time in the more advanced stages of industrialization, reflecting the adoption of increasingly more efficient technologies for energy production and utilization as well as changes in the composition of economic activity (see, e.g., Nakicenovic 1996). And energy intensity in today's developing countries probably peaks sooner and at a lower level along the development path than was the case during the industrialization of the developed world. But even with trends toward greater energy efficiency and other dampening factors, total energy use and energy use per capita continue to grow in the advanced industrialized countries, and even more rapid growth can be expected in the developing countries as their incomes advance. The fact that expanded provision and use of energy services is strongly associated with economic development leaves open how important energy is as a causal factor in economic development. Development involves a number of other steps besides those associated with energy, notably including the evolution of education and labor markets, financial institutions to support capital investment, modernization of agriculture, and provision of infrastructure for water, sanitation, and communications. This is not just an academic question; energy development competes with other development opportunities in the allocation of scarce capital and in the allocation of scarce opportunities for policy and institutional reform.

This paper is a working draft intended to both set the stage and stimulate discussion at the upcoming EPRI workshop on Global Electrification. The workshop is part of a larger EPRI initiative entitled the "Electricity Technology Roadmap," which explores how electricity can better serve a global society undergoing different stages of economic development. The horizon for the Roadmap, and therefore the workshop, is nominally 50 years out, when global population will probably approach 9 billion people.

The paper looks at the role of energy in the lives of the poorest people in the world, and the changing pattern of energy use as economic development ensues. The data record in this regard is incomplete and often conflicting, although broad trends are discernable. The author approaches the analysis from the bottom up and the top down, using existing micro-level studies of energy use in the home, and macro-level studies of the coupling between energy use, the increasing electrification of energy, and economic development.