Pursuing sustainable development goals: a review of renewable energy and poverty alleviation nexus

Reliable and affordable energy supply is the key to achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) aimed at alleviating poverty. However, few studies explore renewable energy and poverty alleviation (RE-PA) practices and RE-PA nexus from a text mining perspective. This paper aims to find the research concerns of the RE-PA nexus and propose a conceptual framework for the synthesis of renewable energy, poverty alleviation, and SDGs. Topic modelling method and Latent Dirichlet Allocation model were adopted, and 5333 records were obtained from Web of Science and the 12-topic model was used to reveal the latent intellectual structure of the current research on RE-PA nexus. The results suggest that the top research concerns of the RE-PA nexus are sustainable energy development, country resource policy, and economic-environmental-social sustainability. Energy access of rural households, ecosystem services, and renewable energy performance are three essential future research directions. The top research concerns and future research directions would help to further explore the RE-PA nexus. This study could also provide a basis for integrated policy recommendations for renewable energy development and poverty alleviation while pursuing SDGs on energy and poverty.