How does energy poverty eradication affect global carbon neutrality?

The continuous growth of global electricity penetration has provided sufficient modern energy for alleviating energy poverty; however, its impact on the carbon neutrality has received little attention from studies. In this research, whether and how global energy poverty influences carbon emissions from the electricity dimension is evaluated. In addition, this study also investigates the regional heterogeneity as well as its internal mechanism. The analysis suggests that: (1) the clean electricity that can provide modern energy to help global energy poverty reduction is mostly generated by traditional fossil energy and renewable energy, which produces a substantially positive influence on the greenhouse effect; (2) electricity promotion cannot help inhibit carbon emissions in Belt and Road Initiative (B&RI) nations, while along non-B&RI nations, eradicating energy poverty from the perspective of electricity can effectively alleviate greenhouse effect; and (3) even though energy poverty eradication increases carbon emissions through economic activities and alleviates greenhouse effect through improved energy efficiency in both B&RI and non-B&RI nations, the bias of promoting electricity toward clean industries in non-B&RI nations can lead to a net mitigation effect of eradicating energy poverty on carbon emissions.

Automated summary

The continuous growth of global electricity penetration has provided modern energy for alleviating energy poverty, but its impact on carbon neutrality has been overlooked. The research reveals that clean electricity from traditional fossil energy and renewable energy has a positive influence on the greenhouse effect. Eradicating energy poverty can effectively alleviate the greenhouse effect, especially in non-Belt and Road Initiative (B&RI) nations.