The impact of climate change and environmental regulation on energy poverty: evidence from China

Background Environmental pollution and energy poverty have always been serious challenges for the global energy system. Results Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2020, this paper uses FE and sys-GMM models to explore the impact of environmental regulations and climate change on energy poverty. The results show that climate change increases energy poverty, with rising energy for cooling in hot summers, and unchanged income in the short term. Moreover, environmental regulation plays a moderating role between climate change and energy poverty. Specifically, economical environmental regulation has a negative moderating effect, while legal and supervised environmental regulations have positive moderating effects. Finally, the national basic energy poverty line used is lower than that in the eastern region, higher than that in the western region, and close to that in the central region, which reflects the heterogeneity of energy poverty in different regions of China. Conclusions The findings in this paper clarify the nexus between climate change, environmental regulation, and energy poverty, addressing in this way a gap in existing research, which has great significance for environmental and energy policy makers.