The Impact of China's 'West to East' Electricity Transmission Project on Energy Poverty

Energy poverty, which means that people can't get enough energy for daily life, is one of the big problems in rural place of Northwest region of China. The government wants to solve the problem with a large-scale electricity transmission project named "West to East". The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the impact of "West to East" project on the reduction of energy poverty in Shaanxi province in China through the analysis of 119 counties between the years 2003 to 2015. Since residential electricity price are set by the government at artificially low levels, an alternative measure is constructed to evaluate energy poverty in the presence of price controls. The results indicate a significant reduction of energy poverty and increase in social welfare because of the completion of "West to East" project.