Changes in energy equality between urban and rural households in China

Energy transition is an effective path to peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, which is an effective measure to bridge the gaps between urban and rural families' energy demand and realize energy equality. Based on the survey data from China Family Panel Studies provided by the Institute of Social Science Survey of Peking University, this paper takes the per capita residential energy cost as the key indicator, and applies three major tools to analyze the evolution of energy equality between urban and rural households during 2013-2017, including Gini coefficient and its decomposing technology, Lorenz curve and Lorenz asymmetry coefficient, Locally Estimated Scatterplot Smoothing, and Stepwise Regression. Then, the significance and economic burden of household energy transition was evaluated. The results show that: (1) On the whole, there are inequalities in household energy cost at present. However, with the implementation of national and local energy transition policies in recent years, the promotion of urban-rural integration, and the increase in the income of urban and rural households, the gap between urban and rural areas had been considerably narrowed during 2013-2017, thus its contribution rate to the national inequality dropped from 26.8% to 24.0%. (2) From the spatial perspective, energy inequality is most prominent in the temperate and humid region covering Yunnan and Guizhou, while the distribution of energy cost in the Yangtze River Delta, which is hot in summer and cold in winter, was relatively reasonable. Meanwhile, energy inequality has remained in the other regions to varying degrees. (3) Household income, household size, residential location, climatic conditions, and modern energy availability significantly affect household energy expenditures, which in turn affect energy equality within a region and between urban and rural areas. However, energy endowment does not have an obvious influence on the household energy expenditures. (4) In recent years, national energy transition had achieved remarkable results, and there had been a widespread coverage of advanced fuels. As the wide use of canned gas/liquefied gas, natural gas/pipeline gas, and electricity in rural areas, a rapid energy transition from primary to advanced fuels was accelerated. Meanwhile, compared with urban residents, rural households are often under greater economic pressure in the energy transition, that is to say, achieving energy transition in rural households will increase higher extra cost than that of urban households with the same per capita income. In addition, in the current process of energy transition, relatively low-income urban households and relatively high-income rural households are the main participants. © 2022, Science Press. All right reserved.