Do the photovoltaic poverty alleviation programs alleviate local energy poverty? —Empirical evidence of 9 counties in rural China

Abstract

As an innovation of the Chinese government energy policy, solar photovoltaic poverty alleviation projects (PPAPs) play a positive role in solving energy shortages and poverty reduction. However, there is limited research on energy poverty in China's PPAP areas. This study has proposed a three-dimensional theoretical model for energy poverty, evaluated the energy poverty in the PPAP areas and analyzed its influencing path. The results show that: (1) The implementation of PPAPs has improved energy poverty to various degrees in all three types of solar resource areas; (2) The availability of energy services is the most prominent problem in energy poverty, and the PPAPs improve the availability of energy services the most; (3) Farmers' economic status and education have the greatest impact on alleviating energy poverty, and (4) The PPAPs directly improve the availability of energy services by increasing power generation and stability of the grid, and indirectly affect the cleanliness of energy consumption and energy affordability through farmers per se, thus affecting local energy poverty. Thus, public policies for promoting clean energy and energy utilization technologies (such as solar PV, etc) would help alleviate energy poverty in the rural areas.