Does rural energy poverty alleviation really reduce agricultural carbon emissions? The case of China

Energy poverty has led to far-reaching global environmental issues as it can exacerbate carbon emissions, particularly in the rural areas. Alleviating rural energy poverty might be a potentially effective way to mitigate this problem. Accordingly, this paper proposes a novel and comprehensive measurement of Rural Energy Poverty Alleviation (REPA) of 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2017. The overall REPA index has increased from 2000 to 2017, despite of obvious regional differences. We empirically verify the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) between REPA and agricultural carbon emissions (ACE) through fixed effects model. The results show that REPA exerts an inverted U-shaped effect on ACE, which means that REPA will reduce ACE after a threshold. Notably, the sub-indicators of REPA, Rural Energy Service Availability (RESA) and Rural Energy Consumption Cleanliness (RECC), can jointly affect ACE through the incremental effect and the reduction effect. Moreover, through the panel threshold model, it can be found that REPA may play a greater role in increasing ACE in provinces with abundant agricultural endowments. Finally, several policy implications are highlighted for policymakers to better achieve the dual goals of alleviating rural energy poverty and reducing agricultural carbon emissions. This study may provide a better understanding of the nexus between REPA and ACE for the low-carbon agriculture development.