Poverty, Growth and the Demand for Energy

New paper presented at the IIES birthday party:
Most of the future growth in energy use is forecast to come from the developing world. Understanding the likely pace and specific location of this growth is essential to inform decisions about energy infrastructure investments and to improve greenhouse gas emissions forecasts. We argue that countries with pro‐poor economic growth will experience much larger increases in energy demand than countries where growth is more regressive. When poor households’ incomes go up, their energy demand increases along the extensive margin as they buy energy‐using assets for the first time. We also argue that the speed at which households come out of poverty affects their asset purchase decisions...