A Global Spatial–Temporal Energy Poverty Assessment and Social Impacts Analysis

Energy poverty (EP) has emerged as a major challenge to achieving sustainable development goals, and its significance in social development has increased over time. This paper aims to analyze the spatial autocorrelation between EP and social factors on a global scale. Utilizing the panel data of 116 countries from 2012 to 2019, the Bivariate local Moran index, a representative spatial econometrics tool, has been employed to examine temporal changes and spatial differences of transboundary synergy and tradeoff relations between EP and social factors. The results indicate that EP has synergy relationships with social factors, including life expectancy at birth, access to immunization, CO₂ emission, and forest area, and tradeoff relationship with social factors, such as infant mortality rate, prevalence of undernourishment, forest rents, and gender inequality. Significant spatial differences have been observed that clusters of high-income countries, particularly those in the Global North, tend to have better energy access and are surrounded by areas with favorable social conditions, and clusters of lower-income countries, especially those in South Africa and Southeast Asia, have lower energy access and are surrounded by areas with more severe social conditions. The robustness analysis has been conducted to verify the reliability of the results. The spatial imbalance of findings offers robust evidence by emphasizing the importance of key areas, such as Southeast Asia and South Africa, that should be prioritized to take essential policy measures to address the EP and social issues.