Research On The Impact Of New Urbanization On Energy Poverty In China

The problem of energy poverty is a major challenge that the international community needs to jointly address,and it has received extensive attention and high attention from academia,government and international institutions.Persistent energy poverty will cause a series of adverse impacts on social development and residents’ lives,such as damage to residents’ health,restriction of social and economic development,and deterioration of the ecological environment.As the largest developing country in the world,China faces more complex,severe and diversified energy poverty problems.China’s urbanization development has entered a new stage of development,and it has become a consensus to implement the new development concept of “innovation,coordination,green,openness and sharing”,coordinate the development of clean energy industries,promote the upgrading of energy consumption levels,and solve the problem of energy poverty.In the context of the continuous advancement of new urbanization,scientifically measuring China’s energy poverty,comprehensively and deeply discussing the impact of new urbanization on China’s energy poverty and the mechanisms behind it,has important theoretical value and practical significance for formulating specific and feasible policies to alleviate and eliminate energy poverty,ensure the quality of China’s economic development,and improve the quality of residents.Based on the existing domestic and foreign literature review and related theoretical preparations,this paper first uses the improved entropy method to objectively calculate the comprehensive evaluation index of energy poverty in 30provincial-level units of China from 2006 to 2017.Secondly,this paper establishes a fixed effect model,a dynamic panel model,a partial linear functional-coefficient model and a spatial econometric model to comprehensively and systematically analyze the impact of new urbanization on China’s energy poverty from linear,nonlinear and spatial perspectives.Thirdly,a panel mediation effect analysis model including farmers’ citizenization,public expenditure and technological innovation is constructed to empirically test the path of new urbanization affecting China’s energy poverty.Finally,combined with the research findings,this paper puts forward corresponding policy recommendations.This study focuses on the impact of new urbanization on energy poverty in China,and draws the following main conclusions:First,at the national level,new-type urbanization has a significantly negative impact on energy poverty,indicating that the development of new-type urbanization is conducive to improving energy poverty.The development of new urbanization has increased the availability of high-quality energy services and the proportion of the population using clean commercial energy.Meanwhile,the energy consumption structure has gradually moved towards clean commercial energy,and the energy management has become more complete.Additionally,residents have more ability to purchase clean energy and environmentally friendly energy equipment,and the pollutant emissions from living energy have reduced.All of these have played an important role in alleviating energy poverty.Second,there are significant differences in the impact of new urbanization on energy poverty in regions with different levels of economic development.In regions with lower levels of economic development,new urbanization has no significant impact on energy poverty.In areas with a high level of economic development(GDP per capita exceeds 15,521.79 yuan),new urbanization has a significant negative effect on energy poverty,indicating that the development of new urbanization is conducive to alleviating energy poverty,and areas with a higher level of economic development,the stronger the effect of new urbanization on energy poverty alleviation.Third,the comprehensive level of energy poverty at the provincial level in China has a significant positive spatial correlation,indicating that provinces with higher levels of energy poverty are adjacent to each other,and provinces with lower levels of energy poverty are also adjacent to each other.In addition,the estimated coefficients of the direct effect,indirect effect and total effect of new urbanization on energy poverty are all significantly negative,which means that the new urbanization has a significantly reducing influence on local energy poverty,and a significantly alleviating impact on surrounding areas’ energy poverty,which implies the new urbanization development can significantly alleviate energy poverty in surrounding provinces through spatial spillover effects.Fourth,the analysis of the mechanism of action shows that the urbanization of farmers,public expenditure and technological innovation are important mechanisms for new urbanization affecting energy poverty.From the perspective of farmers’ citizenization,new-type urbanization will increase the income of migrant farmers and promote farmers’ citizenization.After farmers realize urbanization,they will increase their demand for high-quality modern energy services,optimize energy consumption structure,and improve consumption habits,thereby alleviating energy poverty.From the perspective of public expenditures,new urbanization will increase investment expenditures and transfer expenditures,thereby improving infrastructure construction,increasing residents’ disposable income and improving social security levels.These are conducive to alleviating energy poverty.From the perspective of technological innovation,new type urbanization promotes technological agglomeration and technological spillover,and enhances the level of technological innovation,which helps to increase the supply capacity of clean energy,improve energy utilization efficiency,and finally improve the problem of energy poverty.Based on the above research conclusions,in order to promote the healthy development of China’s new-type urbanization and alleviate and eliminate energy poverty,this paper proposes policy recommendations such as steadily promoting the new-type urbanization process,strengthening regional cooperation,implementing regional differentiated policies,optimizing the structure and effect of government expenditures,improving the level of technological innovation and advocating clean energy consumption.In addition,this paper also points out the insufficiency of the research and puts forward the prospect of the future research direction.