As a result of the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization, the pressure in reducing the greenhouse gas emission is increasing because of incremental demand for energy in China which is one of the largest developing countries in the world, and there are immense rural regions as well as a large amount of rural residents in it. During the process of rural modernization, the residents' income and the living level have greatly improved. In the meantime, it can be obviously detected that the living energy consumed by rural residents has risen strikingly recently, and the main energy consumption is transformed from biomass energy into modern commercial energy which would certainly worsen the contradiction of demand and supply in domestic energy market, and would impose a heavier stress on dealing with the problems caused by climate change. However, only a little attention has been given to energy-saving and emission reduction in China's rural regions due to various reasons.
Jianghan Plain, located in Hubei Province which is a central district in China, is an alluvial plain formed by Yangtze River and Han River. It serves as one of the most important and typical commodity grain base in China and has the strong heterogeneity both in natural and humanities geography. This thesis, taking Jianghan Plain as an example, has obtained the basic data through household surveys and investigated how different income of rural households affected the choices of living energy by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Then, the emission quantity of CO₂、CH₄、N₂O is evaluated according to the emission factors. In addition, the ecological footprint model is utilized to calculate the living energy's eco-environmental effects based on the income level. The study results show: (1) households' living energy consumption is distinct according to different income levels which result in energies of diverse properties to be chosen. High-income households have consumed much more electric energy which is sanitary and clear, while low-income households prefer to firewood, straws and other kinds of non-commercial energy which are economical. (2) In terms of different income level, there also exists significant difference in the consumption quantity of living energy and eco-environmental effects. High-income households have consumed energy of 533.89 kg per capita, 25.24 kg more than low-income households and 7.32 kg more than middle-income. The energy footprint made by high-income households is 2.1569 hm² per capita and reaches 5.87 and 2.58 times respectively than low-income and middle-income households. (3) With the rural households' income increasingly rise, the trend of amount-increase, commercialization and high-carbonation of energy consumption becomes more and more obvious. The growth of the total footprint comes mainly from the commercial energy consumption.
It is demonstrated that the transition of energy consumption construction occurred in China's rural regions, on the one hand, has worsen the contradiction of energy demand and supply, on the other hand, has decreased the function of government endeavor in deducing the industrial emission and in coping with the climate change to some extent. It is also illustrated that it is necessary to popularize the effective energy-saving and emission-reduction technology in vast rural region. Obviously, this research would be helpful to understand and solve the increasingly serious problems of energy shortages and greenhouse gas emission and provide the basis for China's rural energy structure-optimizing issues.