Accurate Identification And Improvement Measures Of Household Energy Poverty In China

At present,energy consumption,as an important material source of human survival and development,may have a dual role in promoting or hindering the process of economic development,social progress and human welfare improvement.And energy poverty is one of the important obstacles.According to the report of International Energy Agency in 2020,hundreds of millions of people are unable to use modern energy in daily life,and the global COVID-19 pandemic will delay the process of solving energy poverty.However,energy poverty possibly affects residents physical health,mental health and quality of life,even restricts human sustainable development and social progress,which has attracted extensive attention of the international community.For example,The United Nations has listed elimination of energy poverty as the seventh sustainable development goal in 2015,and has emphasized that everyone ought to have access to cheap,reliable and sustainable modern energy.In China,standing at the intersection of two centuries,poverty governance has shifted from absolute poverty to relative poverty,achieving common prosperity.At the 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,General Secretary Xi Jinping said,“Chinese modernization is a modernization of people s common prosperity,we must make efforts to promote social fairness”.However,energy consumption inequality will lead to health unfairness,which would affect working ability of energy poor group,and have a further impact on social equity.The basic solution to relative poverty lies in the establishment of public service system.But in fact,there are some shortcomings in public services of China s modern energy infrastructure.Due to imperfect energy infrastructure in remote districts,some residents are unable to consume sufficient modern energy,so that faced with complex and diversified energy poverty.Besides,the increase of global risk points causes insufficient energy supply,which leads to a substantial increase in energy prices.Eventually,it expands the probability of residents falling into energy poverty.At the same time,the 20 th Communist Party of China also mentioned,“we should advocate green consumption,form a green and low-carbon lifestyle”.Therefore,analyzing relative poverty from the perspective of energy poverty,we portray energy poverty status accurately and explore the impact of household energy service optimization,which would play a crucial role in achieving common prosperity and promoting green consumption.Based on the conceptual definition of energy poverty,household energy optimization,energy demand theory,and energy ladder theory,we establish a solid theoretical foundation.And then,we discover that the increase in income level will promote the increase of people s total energy demand and structural better.On this ground,the minimum energy expenditure and the improvement measure of residents in different regions should be quite different in theory.Furthermore,based on the macro data released by the National Bureau of Statistics,we analyze the development of China s energy industry,household energy expenditure and structure.This paper also concludes that there is energy poverty in China s residential energy use,and differences in different regional conditions.Moreover,in order to calculate the national energy poverty line and regional cost of living index respectively,distinct from“one-size-fits-all”,we compute the energy poverty line by using the China Family Panel Study,a demand-based method,quadratic almost ideal demand system model and equivalent scale method.And based on the empirical analysis framework,we obtain the energy poverty line in different regions.What’s more,the study uses the comprehensive energy poverty index to analyze the changes of energy poverty in China under temporal and spatial changes,and classifies energy poverty groups according to the different demographic characteristics.Besides,we explore the impact of improvement measures,which take household energy consumption optimization as an example.The main conclusions are as follows:First,under the reference area assumption of Henan Province,the energy poverty line of each district in China is estimated to be from 374.61 to 1120.64 yuan per year,and the high extreme is Shanghai while the low extreme is Yunnan respectively.The regional energy poverty line basically forms the characteristics of high in the east and low in the west,which is roughly proportional to the level of regional economic development.Second,energy poverty in China has been alleviated from 2016 to 2018,but the measurement results are still relatively serious,and the probability of becoming energy poor population in 2016 and 2018 are 0.561 and 0.512 respectively.The differences in energy poverty are 0.467 and 0.431 respectively,and energy consumption inequality will increase the health risk of the energy poor group,thereby affecting the income level and social equity of this group.Third,from the perspective of different demographic characteristics as income and region,the characteristics of heterogeneous energy poverty in China are very different.According to the income level,different income groups have a certain chance of energy poverty,but low income would be more likely on account of inadequate basic energy consumption.According to the energy poor population under different regional conditions,the regional distribution trend of energy poverty replaced from multi-regional distribution to the southwest,from 2016 to 2018.Fourth,based on the perspective of universal energy service and household energy upgrade,household energy optimization can significantly alleviate energy poverty.Under the conditions of robustness test and heterogeneity,the conclusions still hold.Thereinto,high-income groups living in eastern cities benefit more from the optimization of household energy structure cleanliness and reliability.On the basis of the empirical evidence,we provide some corresponding policy suggestions aimed at alleviating energy poverty.First,the regional energy poverty lines are closely related to household income,in other words,residents’ energy access capacity is usually positively correlated with their income level.Therefore,governments should raise the income of poor groups to meet the minimum energy demand.Besides,during the construction of energy market,the government should fully consider the energy use difficulties of energy poor groups,and further meet the market efficiency demand,while ensuring fairness and efficiency at the same time.Second,the government and the public should pay more attention to the problem from two aspects:the policy framework and the concept of energy use in daily life.The government can take comprehensive measures such as increasing the mechanism to target the energy poor and increasing the investment in remote areas’ energy infrastructure,so as to reduce the incidence of energy poverty while reducing the degree of energy consumption disparity and the depth of energy poverty.Third,in the comprehensive treatment of energy poverty,we should focus on specific regions and groups with serious energy poverty problems.When formulating policies on energy poverty,emphasis should be placed on economic zones such as southwest,northwest and northeast.Meanwhile,corresponding regional groups should be encouraged to rely on local resource endowments.For instance,we can promote photovoltaic power generation,wind power generation and other projects,which realize the “spontaneous self-consumption of electricity,surplus electricity on the Internet”.It is possible to increase the income of energy poor group while reducing energy expenditure and upgrading energy use.Fourth,household energy consumption optimization will alleviate energy poverty in China from multiple indicators such as incidence,intensity and disparity.It is therefore essential to achieve universal energy services and a modern energy-using structure in the residential sector.