Cooking with unclean energy: insight into power shortage in rural areas

Achieving the UN clean energy goal will contribute to the achievement of other sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, the low quality of the power supply is destroying global efforts to introduce clean energy. Specifically, in China, the world’s largest developing country, the rural clean energy plan has been affected by power shortages. It is unclear whether the power shortages are linked to the use of unclean energy sources for cooking by farmers, and it is also unclear what strategies should be adopted to reduce the use of unclean energy for cooking among farmers and the extent to which those strategies will be effective. Thus, this study uses a large sample of data from rural China to assess the quantitative impact of power shortages on unclean energy use in cooking among farmers and identifies the optimal management practices to reduce the probability that farmers use unclean energy in cooking. The results show that (1) unlike farmers who have not suffered from power shortages, farmers who suffer from power shortages tend to use unclean energy for cooking; (2) compared with farmers who suffer from power shortages sometimes, farmers who suffer from power shortages often are more likely to use unclean energy for cooking; and (3) designing local optimization strategies, for example, improving the power supply quality, the infrastructure and livelihood resilience, will reduce the probability that farmers use unclean energy for cooking by 3 ~ 30%. In general, the findings of this study provide valuable evidence for policies that promote global sustainable development.