Abstract:
Rural components are integral parts of China's economy, and hundreds of millions of China's residents still live in
rural areas. Rural residents heavily depend on non-commercial energy due to the inaccessibility and unaffordability of
commercial energy. Conventional use of solid
biomass fuels threatens
public health as well as environmental and ecological sustainability. Thus,
rural energy transition must be promoted. By using a new
dataset, we show China's rural energy transition to gain insights on where, how, and why this transition occurs in rural households. Unlike previous views, we find that after considering non-commercial energy, the per
capita consumption of rural
residential energy is considerably larger than that of urban counterparts. Moreover, migrations from rural to
urban areas decrease rather than increase residential
energy consumption. Furthermore, rural energy transition from low to high quality depresses energy consumption. Our results demonstrate how accessibility and
affordability affect the fuel preferences of rural residents, thereby enabling us to identify the mechanisms of rural energy transition. We provide some insights and policy implications on the routes of China's rural energy transition, which may be further extended to other emerging and
developing countries due to their similar rural energy use.