Rural household energy transition in China: Trends and challenges

Against the backdrop of both environmental and health issues caused by inefficient combustion of solid fuels in households, the transition to clean energy is a critical development imperative. This study uses publicly available administrative data spanning nearly 30 years at the provincial level to characterize the “business as usual” (BAU) energy transition in China's rural household sector in order to inform interventions needed to achieve clean energy goals. We first describe the temporal trends and spatial characteristics of energy transitions over the past three decades. We then use a simple two-way fixed effects model to estimate the role that household income growth plays in this transition process. Finally, we predict the timeline for the BAU rural energy transition with an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. Our results show that China's rural household sector has gradually undergone a consistent but geographically uneven transition over the past three decades. Compared with warmer provinces without indoor heating, where a 1000 RMB increase in per capita income is associated with a 5–10% increase in the share of clean energy, in provinces with heating needs the predicted effect is less than 2%. ARIMA model projections suggest that without policy interventions, for most provinces in northern China the share of clean energy would remain less than 40% by the year 2050. The “clean heating program” implemented in the North China Plain in 2015 has therefore advanced the energy transition by 10 years in just the 3 years between 2015 and 2018. Together, these results show the potential for interventions in helping spur energy transitions.