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Rural energy policy is a critical measure to fight the long-standing poverty issue in China. Energy poverty, per se, is one important yet too often neglected dimension of poverty, and one of the biggest challenges in rural China during the 40-year rural reform. Reducing energy poverty is one of the poverty alleviation tasks and the goals of energy transition in the rural areas. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the status of energy poverty in China, discussing the challenges of energy poverty reduction, and then proposing the potential measures.

Using various data (including the authors’ survey data), this paper analyzes the volume and structure of energy use, and affordability of energy for the rural households, then examines the impacts of energy poverty on health, social and productivity, and finally discusses the infrastructure, cognitive ability, culture, income, etc., that shape the challenges to energy poverty reduction.

In addition to raising the household income, it is urgently needed to enforce the collaborations among government departments, and to improve the energy infrastructure according to local conditions, helping the residential environment cognition.

Energy poverty is almost a too often neglected issue in rural China. Few in existing literature comprehensively investigate this critically important social economic problem. This paper contributes to the profound understanding in energy poverty and the possible approaches to alleviate it.

Promoting clean heating in rural areas is crucial for achieving a low-carbon transition of energy consumption and China's dual-carbon target. The study aims to consider the energy stacking behavior in heating energy use, reveals the determinants that affect household cleaner heating choices under the winter clean heating plan (WCHP), and proposes policy recommendations for the sustainable promotion of clean heating.

With unique rural household survey data covering the clean heating pilot regions in northern China in 2020, this study estimates the relationship between driving factors and heating energy choices through binary and multivariate probit models.

The regression estimates show that the main drivers of heating energy choices include household income per capita, education level of household head, knowledge of the WCHP, access to heating subsidies and perception of indoor air pollution. There is energy stacking behavior in rural household heating energy use. Household decisions to adopt electricity or clean coal heating are correlated with firewood or soft coal use.

This study is one of the few to investigate the heating energy use of rural households by allowing for the adoption of multiple energy types. Combined with a unique microsurvey dataset, it could provide rich information for formulating proper energy transition planning. The findings also shed light on the importance of heating subsidies, households' knowledge of WCHP and awareness of environmental health in choosing clean heating energy, which has not been fully valued in related research.

This paper aims to identify key sectors in carbon footprint responsibility, an introduced concept depicting CO₂ responsibilities allocated through the supply chain containing sectoral activities and interactions. In detail, various key sectors could be identified according to comparative advantages in trade, sectoral linkage and sectoral synergy within the supply chain.

A semi-closed input–output model is used to make the household income–expenditure relationship endogenous through the supply chain where sectoral CO₂ emissions are calculated, and the production-based responsibility (PR) principle is evaluated. Thus, according to “carbon footprint responsibility”, modified hypothetical extraction method is applied to decompose sectoral CO₂ in terms of comparative advantages in trade, sectoral linkage and synergy. Finally, key sectors are identified via sectoral shares and associated decompositions in carbon footprint responsibility.

Compared to 2005, in 2012, the PR principle failed to track sectoral CO₂ flow, and embodied CO₂ in import and interprovincial export increased, with manufacturing contributing the most; manufacturing should take more carbon responsibilities in the internal linkage, and tertiary sectors in the net forward and backward linkage, with sectors enjoying low carbonization in the mixed linkage; inward net CO₂ flows of manufacturing and service sectors were more complicated than their outward ones in terms of involved sectors and economic drivers; and residential effects on CO₂ emissions of traditional sectors increased, urban effects remained larger than rural ones and manufacturing and tertiary sectors received the largest residential effects.

The value of this paper is as follows: the household income–expenditure relationship got endogenous in intermediate supply and demand, corresponding to the rapid urbanization in megacities; key sectors were observed to change flexibly according to real sectoral activities and interaction; and the evaluation of the PR principle was completed ahead of using a certain CO₂ accounting principle at the city level.