Does low-carbon energy transition mitigate energy poverty? The case of natural gas for China

Kangyin Dong (), Qingzhe Jiang, Muhammad Shahbaz and Jun Zhao

Energy Economics, 2021, vol. 99, issue C

Abstract: Low-carbon energy transition has promoted China's green and sustainable development; however, it will be hindered by energy poverty. To investigate whether low-carbon energy transition can mitigate the energy poverty, based on panel data of China's 30 provinces covering the period of 2004–2017, this study investigates the impact of natural gas consumption (NGC) on China's energy poverty by employing the differential generalized method of moments (D-GMM) as the benchmark method. For this purpose, China's energy poverty is assessed by constructing a composite index that includes four sub-indices. We also analyze the influencing mechanism and heterogeneous impact of NGC on energy poverty. The overall estimation results imply that the impact of NGC on China's energy poverty is significantly negative; in other words, increased NGC can effectively mitigate China's energy poverty. Moreover, through the influencing mechanism check, the impact of NGC on energy poverty is mainly sourced from the four sub-indices, i.e., energy service availability (ESA), energy consumption cleanliness (ECC), energy management completeness (EMC), and household energy affordability & energy efficiency (EAE). Furthermore, the impact of NGC on energy poverty differs across various regions. Finally, several important policy implications are highlighted for eliminating China's energy poverty and promoting growth in the country's low-carbon energy industry.

Keywords: Low-carbon energy transition; Energy poverty; Natural gas consumption (NGC); Sub-indices and heterogeneous analysis; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C31 Q43 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (80)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988321002309
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:99:y:2021:i:c:s0140988321002309

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105324

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().