Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1007/s43621-026-03411-6

Publication Title

Discover Sustainability

Volume

Advance online publication

Pages

46 pp.

Abstract

Energy poverty (EP) remains a persistent global challenge with important implications for economic development, public health, and social welfare. While natural resources, particularly oil and gas, are often viewed as key sources of energy access, their effectiveness in mitigating EP remains underexplored in emerging economies. This study examines the relationship between natural resource rents (NRR), specifically oil rents (OR) and natural gas rents (NGR), and energy poverty (EP) in the Next Eleven (N-11) countries from 2000 to 2020. The primary objective is to assess how NRR influences EP at various levels of poverty using the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR). Our findings demonstrate that NRR significantly reduces EP, particularly in countries with higher baseline energy poverty, while the effect weakens at lower quantiles. This suggests that while resource wealth can alleviate energy poverty, it requires robust governance and sustainable management policies to be effective. The study contributes to the literature on resource wealth and energy poverty, providing insights relevant to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy). The findings also offer policy recommendations for enhancing energy access in resource-rich yet energy-poor nations. Specifically, policymakers should prioritize reinvesting natural resource rents into energy infrastructure, focusing on renewable energy development, rural electrification, and long-term economic diversification to ensure sustainable and inclusive energy access.

Rights

© The Authors 2026.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Original Publication Citation

Salah Uddin, M., Ali, A., Ahmed, Z., Sikdar, M. N. U., Habib, A., & Al-Mahde, A. E. (2026). Natural resource rents and energy poverty nexus in next eleven economies. Discover Sustainability. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-03411-6

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