CS31: Social Equity and Sustainable Development

This study examines the intersection of energy poverty and hidden hunger by evaluating the impact of India's Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) on household nutritional security. While PMUY is primarily recognized as the world's largest clean cooking initiative, distributing over 10 crore LPG connections, its role as a bridge to improved dietary adequacy remains under-explored. We conceptualize the transition from solid fuels to LPG as a driver for nutrition through three primary pathways: the reduction of household air pollution, significant time savings for women, and enhanced diet quality. 
The methodology utilizes high-resolution consumption data from the 68th (2011-12) and 78th (2022-23) rounds of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). By applying nutrient coefficients from the Indian Food Composition Tables (2017), we construct household-level intake measures across a range of macro- and micronutrients. A Difference-in-Differences (DiD) framework is employed to isolate the causal effect of the program, effectively removing biases from time-invariant factors and comparing the progress of beneficiaries against a control group.
The analysis provides robust evidence that PMUY participation significantly enhanced nutrient intake, effectively serving as a nutritional safety net that closed baseline gaps despite national declines in dietary quality. However, the results also highlight critical socio-demographic disparities, particularly among Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households, and note that high refill costs continue to encourage "fuel stacking". We conclude that for clean cooking energy to fully realize its potential as a health intervention, policy design must move beyond energy access to address affordability and integrate with food distribution and nutrition education frameworks

Residential heating is a central challenge within the social dimensions of the energy transition, where climate mitigation objectives intersect with affordability and vulnerability. However, most policy instruments evaluate technologies based on direct costs and operational emissions, overlooking the full supply chain's impacts and implications for energy poverty. This paper presents an integrated analytical framework linking Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with multidimensional energy poverty metrics to support more equitable heating policy design.
The study focuses on southern Chile, where firewood-based heating remains dominant, and energy poverty is widespread. We develop an open-source LCA model to quantify the cradle-to-grave climate and human health impacts of alternative heating systems, including heat pumps, pellet stoves, gas boilers, and retrofit-enhanced solutions. These impacts are monetized to estimate the "social cost of heating," extending beyond private fuel expenditures.
The environmental cost component is incorporated into an energy poverty framework that considers household income, housing efficiency, and indoor comfort. This approach enables comparison of technologies not only by emissions performance but also by their implications for affordability and distributional outcomes. Field measurements of indoor temperature and air quality in rural areas of southern Chile are used to contextualize and calibrate the model.
Preliminary results suggest that incorporating life cycle externalities can modify the relative social efficiency ranking of heating technologies, particularly when health damages from biomass combustion are considered. The framework highlights the importance of jointly evaluating technology replacement and building retrofitting to advance both climate objectives and social equity.
Acknowledgement: This research is supported by the Research Partnership Grant 2025 of the Leading House for the Latin American Region at the University of St.Gallen, fostering collaboration between Chile and Switzerland under the project "Promoting Sustainable Heating Under Energy Poverty: A Life Cycle Approach" (RPG25138).

Achieving global mitigation targets requires rapid and effective energy transitions, whose success fundamentally depends on public acceptance. However, the complexity and transformative nature of energy transition topics create risks of knowledge gaps, misinformation, and emotional polarization in public discourse. Public attitudes toward the energy transition are not static but vary with political, economic, and belief-related factors, highlighting the importance of examining how media communication may shape public perceptions and policy acceptance.
This study examines public communication on the energy transition through natural language processing techniques applied to German news media. We analyze sentiment patterns in energy-related news transcripts from Tagesschau, Germany's most-watched news programme, providing insights into how media framing may influence public perceptions and societal discourse.
Our methodological contribution includes a novel domain-specific sentiment analysis model developed through a human-AI annotation workflow. The model employs a stacking ensemble approach, integrating predictions from three base learners through a logistic re gression meta-learner to classify content as positive, negative, or neutral. We complement this with a hybrid topic modeling framework that combines keyword-based extraction with language-model-assisted labeling, enabling systematic examination of thematic coverage patterns and temporal dynamics.
This design allows us to examine how the energy transition is framed over time, which energy-related topics dominate media coverage, and how sentiment varies across thematic areas. Preliminary results for the period 2023-2025 show that both sentiment and the intensity of media coverage differ across topics, with predominantly negative sentiment for energy costs and more mixed representations for energy policy, underscoring the importance of balanced communication for fostering public acceptance of the energy transition and broader societal engagement.

Global energy-transition investment reaches USD 2.4 trillion in 2024, yet 90% remains concentrated in advanced economies and China, leaving developing countries critically underfunded relative to 1.5°C pathways. Targeted energy investment is therefore essential to address financial gaps and balance the energy trilemma. Against this backdrop, this study asks, "How does energy investment affect the energy trilemma indicators, i.e., energy security, energy equity, and environmental sustainability, in developing countries?" (ii) How do financial system indicators (financial development, financial institutions, and the financial markets) influence energy trilemma indicators? and (iii) How do financial system indicators moderate the effect of energy investment on the energy trilemma in developing countries?. To address these questions, this study examines the impact of public investment in energy and the financial system (financial development, financial institutions, and financial markets) on the energy trilemma dimensions (energy security, energy equity, and environmental sustainability) of 57 developing countries over 2000-2023. This study employs Driscoll–Kraay standard errors to address cross-sectional dependence, instrumental variable estimation with fixed-effect two-step generalized method of moments to tackle endogeneity issues, and KLS to analytically correct the bias of OLS estimates for the postulated range of endogeneity. The findings reveal that energy investments and strong financial systems increase energy security and energy equity, while they are not supportive of improving the environmental dimensions of the energy trilemma. The analysis further explores the moderating roles of energy investment with the financial system; their accelerative impact on energy trilemma indicators highlights that stronger financial systems and energy investment enhance the effectiveness of energy investment in balancing the energy trilemma. Therefore, the policymakers should reform the financial system to align with energy goals, ensuring that investment flows into clean energy infrastructure, which balances the energy trilemma and supports progress toward SDG 7 in developing countries.