With climate change and inequality concerns being the twofold challenge for societies, vigorously facilitating the pace of energy transition in parallel to promoting social justice is addressed by global societies. Using an empirical analysis of 30 provinces in China, we examine how the pace of multi-dimension energy transition influences urban-rural income gap. It starts from an assessment of China's energy transition performance by constructing a comprehensive index framework. Then we investigate the impacts of the energy transition on the urban-rural income gap by employing panel data of China's 30 provinces from 2008 to 2019. Our results demonstrate a significant upward trend in China's overall energy transition performance. Meanwhile, this paper highlights the positive but heterogenous contributions of the energy transition to narrowing the urban-rural income gap. We also gauge the positive moderating effects of energy transition and various targeted transition policies and environmental factors on the urban-rural income gap in China, such as the clean heating and PV-based poverty alleviation project; but the negative effect of coal phaseout policy cannot be ignored. Our findings in the context of urban-rural income inequality in China provide practical insights and pertinent policy implications to deepen understanding of the global just energy transition.
主要创新点：
构建了多维度的能源转型综合指标，评估了我国省级层面的能源转型绩效，量化了能源转型进程对城乡收入差距的影响，揭示了我国能源转型对扶贫、社会公平和区域发展的潜在影响，为剖析转型的社会影响机理和加快公正能源转型提供政策启示。
原文链接：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113759
Edited：Xie Danyang
