The objective of this paper is to identify the factors that contribute to the change in rural residential commercial energy consumption in China by utilizing the LMDI (Log Mean Divisia Index) method. Then the decoupling index is developed based on those factors to evaluate the progress in decoupling energy consumption from per capita annual net income of rural households. The results show that: (1) Rural residential commercial energy consumption in China grew at a yearly rate of 2.15% over the period 1991-2010; however, the rural residential commercial energy consumption per capita increased from 75.96 in 1991 to 143.74 kgtce in 2010. (2) The income effect is the critical factor in the growth of rural residential energy consumption in China and the energy intensity effect plays the dominant role in decreasing rural energy consumption. (3) The period 1995-1996, 2001-2005 and 2007-2008 represents a re-coupling effect, the period 1992-1993, 1994-1995, 1996-1998 and 1999-2000 indicates strong decoupling effect, while the other time interval shows weak decoupling effect. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.