Wang, Q., Fan, J., Kwan, MP. et al. Examining energy inequality under the rapid residential energy transition in China through household surveys. Nat Energy 8, 251–263 (2023)

Objective:

• Employ CFPS data to study the link between the energy transition and energy cost-based inequality by tracing the targeted households to different income groups

Case:

• China

Methodology:

• OLS
• 2SLS
• Random Forest
• Gini and decompose: Shapely approach

Data Source

• CFPS
• Daily temperature

Findings:

• Since 2011, 22.1% households switched from solid fuels to clean energy
• The transition to clean energy was more evident in rural households than in their urban counterparts

• Households in poverty accounted for 56% of all sampled households that underwent energy transition during 2011-2013

• As the average household energy cost increased, the inequality measured by energy cost yielded a declined trend; when measureing inequality by income, the Gini index increased
• Urban households generally spent more of their annual income on energy cost than their rural counterparts
• Poor rural households experienced the higehest growth in energy cost

• Average household spent about 5% of their income on energy. For urban households, the median energy burden declined from 5.4% in 2013 to 4.8% in 2017, while the opposite was observed for rural households
• 30.1%~34.2% of surveyed households experienced energy poverty
• Rural communities were disproportionately and increasingly affected by energy poverty

Coding Reference:

• Stata: Upon request