Consolidating the livelihood resilience of the poverty-alleviated population through distributed new energy construction

Consolidating and expanding the achievements of poverty alleviation and resolutely preventing large-scale relapse into poverty are not only a critical prerequisite for comprehensively advancing rural revitalization, but also a solid foundation for steadily promoting common prosperity. The Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development clearly states: “We should make coordinated efforts to establish regular mechanisms for preventing rural residents from lapsing or relapsing into poverty. We should continue to provide well-targeted assistance, strengthen support to help those most in need, ramp up development-based assistance, and boost internal impetus for development. We should provide multi-tiered and categorized assistance for underdeveloped areas, enhance policies supporting key counties in need of assistance in achieving rural revitalization, and make every effort to guard against any large-scale lapse or relapse into poverty.” With the advancement of the “dual carbon” goals and the accelerated iteration of new energy technologies, distributed new energy systems such as rooftop photovoltaics, biomass briquette fuels, and micro-energy storage systems are reshaping the rural energy production and consumption landscape. By strengthening the income stability and growth of rural populations and promoting common prosperity, these systems comprehensively enhance the industrial resilience, income resilience, and climate adaptation resilience of the poverty-alleviated population. Moving beyond the capital logic that benefits only a minority, they are rapidly becoming an endogenous driving force for the sustainable development of vast formerly poor areas.

I. Empowering the Industrial Resilience of Poverty-Alleviated Areas

Under traditional poverty alleviation models, some formerly poor areas have fallen into excessive dependence on transfer payments, charitable support, or a single agricultural product. When faced with external shocks such as policy adjustments, market fluctuations, or natural disasters, they easily expose their vulnerability and trigger the risk of relapse. The introduction of distributed new energy can help overcome this predicament. Its core value lies in providing clean and self-sufficient power security. Moreover, as inclusive infrastructure and a production factor, it systematically embeds itself into the rural industrial system through three dimensions of assets, business forms, and employment. First, distributed new energy converts idle rural rooftops, wasteland, and other resource endowments into clearly titled fixed assets, generating basic asset-based income and raising the income floor for the poverty-alleviated population. Second, new energy integrates with and complements characteristic industries, giving rise to innovative “photovoltaic + industry” models and scenarios such as agriculture-photovoltaic complementary, pastoral-photovoltaic complementary, fishery-photovoltaic complementary, and medicinal-plant-photovoltaic complementary. This extends the land output chain and increases economic density per unit area. For example, in Fulou Village, Lankao County, Henan Province, the “zero-carbon village” model where farmers provide rooftops, central state-owned enterprises provide equipment, and the board manages centrally, precisely compensates for rural shortcomings in capital, technology, and maintenance, effectively enhancing farmer participation and benefits. In Yijun County, Tongchuan City, Shaanxi Province, relying on agriculture-photovoltaic and medicinal-plant-photovoltaic complementary systems, the area achieves combined income from green power generation above the panels and Chinese herbal medicine cultivation below, broadening income sources for village collectives and poverty-alleviated households. Third, the manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance, and project development segments of distributed new energy have moderate technical thresholds and high labor absorption capacity, facilitating the formation of localized industrial chains suitable for absorbing left-behind populations in formerly poor areas for nearby employment. For example, jobs like local processing of photovoltaic brackets, cleaning and dust removal of village-level power stations, management of “photovoltaic + greenhouse” projects, and collection, storage, and transport of biomass, are rooted in the countryside and create stable employment increments locally. Energy self-sufficiency and industrial linkages connect poverty-alleviated villages and households to the market systems of grid power sales and agricultural product processing, upgrading originally single agricultural output into multi-tier value returns. Resource endowments are thus internalized into sustainable endogenous development capacity, substantially enhancing the industrial resilience and risk resistance of the poverty-alleviated population.

II. Strengthening the Income Resilience of the Poverty-Alleviated Population

Although large-scale centralized new energy bases serve as the main force for energy transition, they tend to follow the wealth logic of capital intensity and concentrated land transfer, amplifying the dominant position of capital holders and concentrating land and technology factors, thereby giving rise to a small number of high-income groups, widening the wealth gap, and squeezing out direct benefits for farmers. Smallholder farmers are the fundamental component of China’s agriculture and the main demographic among the poverty-alleviated population. The beneficiaries of distributed new energy should effectively and precisely reach the vast number of farming households. On the one hand, distributed new energy reduces living costs, achieving implicit income increases and substantially improving disposable income of farmers. For example, the average cost of a single heating season in northern China can reach several thousand yuan, whereas biomass central heating and “photovoltaic + heat pump” systems can significantly cut this expenditure; rural household biogas and biomass stoves can reduce expenditure on chemical fertilizers and fuel. The cost savings from such energy self-sufficiency effectively increase income of farmers in disguised form, enhancing their financial flexibility to cope with sudden expenses. On the other hand, under the “enterprise + village collective + farmer” benefit linkage mechanism, farmers avoid market risks by leasing their resources, ensuring stable passive income. For example, in Yuanshi County, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province, the average annual leasing income from rooftop photovoltaics for farmers ranges from 2,000 to 3,000 yuan, accounting for 17.12% of the average annual income of poverty-alleviated households, with a marginal benefit three times that of urban residents. In grassroots practice, a biomass gasification plant built by a village cooperative with loans from a development bank can be operated by a few locally trained personnel, supplying electricity to hundreds of households and supporting agricultural product processing, with profits shared between the collective and farmers. By restructuring income and expenditure patterns, distributed new energy diversifies income sources for the poverty-alleviated population and consolidates their long-term income resilience.

III. Enhancing the Climate Adaptation Resilience of the Poverty-Alleviated Population

As a crucial link between energy transition and the construction of climate-resilient societies, distributed new energy construction provides solid support for the poverty-alleviated population to withstand climate shocks and restore livelihood resilience. First, deeply integrated with rural development actions, it enhances livability resilience. In the renovation of rural housing and follow-up support for relocation, facilities such as building-integrated photovoltaics, clean heating retrofits, and micro-energy storage systems are planned simultaneously, turning buildings themselves into energy-producing units. Particularly in situations where extreme weather causes external grid outages, distributed new energy can guarantee the basic electricity and heating needs of the poverty-alleviated population, laying a material foundation for their proactive adaptation to climate change. Second, integrated with digital village construction, it enhances digital-intelligence resilience. Real-time production data from distributed new energy can be uploaded to cloud platforms, allowing farmers to monitor power generation and earnings via mobile phones. Platforms can leverage artificial intelligence and big data to guide farmers in obtaining green certificate eligibility, optimizing generation periods and electricity usage strategies, thereby increasing their climate risk awareness and market participation capacity, and promoting the transformation of poverty-alleviated populations into part-time farming households. Third, connected with ecological civilization construction, it enhances ecological resilience. Many formerly poor areas are located in ecologically fragile zones; biomass energy utilization effectively addresses straw burning and untreated livestock waste discharge, reducing non-point source pollution; photovoltaic desert control models not only provide clean power but also restore vegetation, conserve water, and improve soil moisture retention. This virtuous cycle of “green energy promoting a green environment” improves the production and living environment of the poverty-alleviated population, fundamentally reducing the risk of relapse caused by climate disaster factors such as extreme drought and soil erosion. In summary, through pathways such as human settlement improvement, digital empowerment, and ecological restoration, distributed new energy transforms new energy into climate capital that the poverty-alleviated population can mobilize and capitalize on, building climate adaptation resilience that is strong and quick to recover in formerly poor areas.

IV. Optimizing Institutional Supply Targeting the Poverty-Alleviated Population

To realize the inclusive value of distributed new energy, the key lies in ensuring that development gains benefit the poverty-alleviated population. The focus is on building a full-chain institutional safeguard system, coordinating precise institutional design in key areas such as property rights confirmation, financial support, operation and maintenance management, and market integration, while addressing pressing livelihood concerns regarding energy development incentives, rural micro-financing, skills training, and fair grid access. First, solidify the property rights system to ensure benefits accrue to households. Clarify the supportive nature of new energy and the principal beneficiary status of farmers, and implement mechanisms whereby village collectives conduct unified negotiations and benefits are directly linked to accounts of farmers. In the “enterprise + village collective + farmer” co-construction model, clarify resource share ratios and value-added dividend mechanisms, so that value-added profits take root in rural areas and fully guarantee that property rights and benefits are assigned to and received by poverty-alleviated households. Second, improve green finance and optimize credit mechanisms. Promote low-interest, long-term micro-credit products such as “photovoltaic loans” and “biomass loans”, allow future income rights as collateral, and reduce participation barriers for poverty-alleviated households through fiscal interest subsidies, premium subsidies, equipment leasing, and reward-substitution subsidies. Third, strengthen operation and maintenance guarantees and fortify risk control lines. Establish rural operation and maintenance centers, improve digital service platforms, and cultivate local technical service teams capable of rapid response to common tasks such as photovoltaic panel cleaning, inverter replacement, and biomass boiler maintenance. Develop specialized insurance products for risks such as disaster damage and power generation shortfalls, reasonably set claims standards and procedures, and reduce project implementation risks. Fourth, break regional barriers and integrate into energy markets. In conjunction with rural grid upgrades and digital village construction, on the one hand, promote biomass briquette fuel processing and biogas projects to connect with urban heating and industrial bioenergy demand markets. On the other hand, relying on virtual power plants, green power trading, and carbon sink markets, guide distributed energy in formerly poor areas to shift from self-sufficiency to participating in grid peak-load shifting and valley-filling. Through institutional safeguards that strengthen participation rights of farmers, distributed new energy can be deeply integrated into rural revitalization, providing solid support for steadily advancing common prosperity.

In the process of consolidating and expanding poverty alleviation achievements, advancing energy transition, and moving toward common prosperity, the most arduous and heavy tasks lie in rural areas, and the broadest and deepest foundation also lies there. From a global perspective, solar-resource-rich areas overlap heavily with rural poverty maps, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Central America—typical regions of the “Global South”. Market-driven distributed new energy has strong replicable and scalable value, offering an efficient energy transition pathway for rural populations in developing countries with weak grid infrastructure. For instance, China assisted in building a solar demonstration village project in Mali, which employed off-grid solar home systems, solar water pumping systems, and centralized solar power supply systems, providing stable electricity and clean water to thousands of households. In addition, China exported photovoltaic modules to Pakistan, primarily for small-scale photovoltaic panels installations by residents and enterprises, effectively alleviating power outage crises and grid dispatch pressures, and directly improving livelihood resilience of poor population.

Distributed new energy construction, with its geographical suitability advantages, serves as a key link connecting poverty alleviation consolidation, the “dual carbon” goals, and rural revitalization. By converting field waste into green resources, it diversifies income sources for the poverty-alleviated population and continuously strengthens their risk resistance capacity. This process uses the stability of asset income to counter the short-term volatility of climate change, uses the inclusiveness of dispersed participation to break the suction effect of capital advantages, and replaces predatory resource development with green industries rooted in the soil. A sustainable path has been forged through grassroots innovation to consolidate and expand the achievements of poverty alleviation and enhance livelihood resilience. Distributed new energy construction enables the broadest rural population to become participants, contributors, and beneficiaries of the energy revolution, to an indispensable path in the energy transition of China.

(The author is a PhD candidate from Faculty of Applied Economics, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.)