Abstract
Promoting a just energy transition of rural households in ecologically fragile areas is a critical step to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but there is a pressing need to clarify how policymakers can facilitate this transition process. Through a rural household survey of China, here we reveal the disparities in energy transition, energy poverty, and energy inequality among different household groups. While many rural households switch to clean energy for cooking and boiling, solid fuels are still used as the primary energy source, particularly for heating. Notably, small, low-income households and those from the Loess Plateau suffer disproportionate energy burden and energy poverty, energy inequality varies greatly by energy types, regions, ethnicity, and income levels. These findings highlight the importance of energy availability, affordability, sustainability, and acceptability for a just energy transition framework, which provides informative guidance for promoting just energy transition in ecologically fragile areas worldwide.
Data availability
All data used in this study to generate the results and figures are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31528588.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72474171,72104191,72174197), The Youth Innovation Team of Shaanxi Universities (2023-2026), Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (2025A1515010933), Guangdong Provincial Department of Education (0202202300032), Intergovernmental International Science and Technology Innovation Collaboration Key Project (2025YFE0100600) and STU Scientific Research Initiation Grant (NTF23027T). We thank Haoyang Du, Bowen Zhang, Jinhong Yuan, Pingbo Li, Yao Zhang, Weixi Mi, Borui Dong, Mengmeng Wang, Chenxi Zhang, Yiwei Ma, Haojie Li, Xinyi Wang, Yijie Li, Ziwei Yang, Wenxuan Zhong, Xiang Zhang, Xi Zheng, Jingyan Li, Zhen Wen, Yongchao Zhu, Feng Wang, Huihui Song, Jiahui Nan, Jingyang Zhao, Yang Ye, Fangmei Fan and Ze Yuwen from Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology for their valuable efforts in data collection for this study.
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L.L. and H.X. conceived the research objectives, L.L., H.X., and M.Z. drafted the manuscript, L.L., H.X., and Z.C. led the data collection, H.X., Z.C., J.P. and M.D. did the data cleaning, L.L., H.X., Z.C., R.G., and J.Z. performed the modeling and wrote the codes and carried out the analyses, L.L., H.X., and M.Z. led the writing of the manuscript, J.Y.S.L. and Y.C. substantially revised the manuscript.
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Xia, H., Chen, Z., Leung, J.Y.S. et al. Promoting just energy transition in ecologically fragile areas of China through a rural household survey. Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03478-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03478-z
