Bioenergy for Sustainable Rural Development: Elevating Government Governance with Environmental Policy in China

Energy is not only the crucial driver of economic activities within rural areas. Conventional energy sources are crucial for the prosperity of rural areas; however, they also prove detrimental to the rural ecosystem. To achieve sustainable rural development, increasing the consumption of renewable energy sources can prove vital. Among all the renewable energy sources, bioenergy is the cheapest and easiest to produce in rural areas. Therefore, it is crucial to estimate the impact of bioenergy on the rural development of China. Thus, the primary purpose of this analysis is to analyze the impact of bioenergy and environmental policy stringency on the rural development of China from 1995 to 2022 by employing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and quantile autoregressive distributed lag (QARDL) framework. The results highlight the significance of bio-energy for rural development in the short and long run. Likewise, environmental policy stringency is also a vital factor in fostering short- and long-run rural development. Based on these outcomes, it is recommended that policymakers integrate bioenergy development policies into broader rural development strategies.