Metabolisms of energy in society and space are predicated upon human labour, in ways that are often poorly recognized in relation to the global climate challenge. I synthesize and interrogate ...existing scholarship on the relationship between energy and labour across different spatio-temporal contexts, so as to reveal the overlapping networks that bind energy workers, consumers and producers. Drawing upon geographical, feminist, social practice and political ecology insights, I propose a research agenda that foregrounds the role of social reproduction – through capital-labour regimes and the gendered division of labour – in shaping the circulation and contestation of energy use.
Despite growing pan-European interest in and awareness of the wide-ranging health and well-being impacts of energy poverty-which is characterised by an inability to secure adequate levels of energy ...services in the home-the knowledge base is largely British-centric and dominated by single-country studies. In response, this paper investigates the relationship between energy poverty, health and well-being across 32 European countries, using 2012 data from the European Quality of Life Survey. We find an uneven concentration of energy poverty, poor health, and poor well-being across Europe, with Eastern and Central Europe worst affected. At the intersection of energy poverty and health, there is a higher incidence of poor health (both physical and mental) amongst the energy poor populations of most countries, compared to non-energy poor households. Interestingly, we find the largest disparities in health and well-being levels between energy poor and non-energy poor households occur within relatively equal societies, such as Sweden and Slovenia. As well as the unique challenges brought about by rapidly changing energy landscapes in these countries, we also suggest the relative deprivation theory and processes of social comparison hold some value in explaining these findings.
Energy poverty – which has also been recognised via terms such as ‘fuel poverty’ and ‘energy vulnerability’ – occurs when a household experiences inadequate levels of energy services in the home. ...Measuring energy poverty is challenging, as it is a culturally sensitive and private condition, which is temporally and spatially dynamic. This is compounded by the limited availability of appropriate data and indicators, and lack of consensus on how energy poverty should be conceptualised and measured. Statistical indicators of energy poverty are an important and necessary part of the research and policy landscape. They carry great political weight, and are often used to guide the targeting of energy poverty measures – due to their perceived objectivity – with important consequences for both the indoor and built environment of housing. Focussing on the European Union specifically, this paper critically assesses the available statistical options for monitoring energy poverty, whilst also presenting options for improving existing data. This is examined through the lens of vulnerability thinking, by considering the ways in which policies and institutions, the built fabric and everyday practices shape energy use, alongside the manner in which energy poor households experience and address the issue on a day-to-day basis.
This paper scrutinizes existing policy efforts to address energy poverty at the governance scale of the European Union (EU) and its constituent Member States. Our main starting point is the recent ...expansion of energy poverty policies at the EU level, fuelled by the regulatory provisions of the Clean Energy for all Europeans Package, as well as the establishment of an EU Energy Poverty Observatory. Aided by a systematic and customized methodology, we survey the extensive scientific body of work that has recently been published on the topic, as well as the multiple strategies and measures to address energy poverty that have been formulated across the EU. This includes the principal mitigation approaches adopted by key European and national institutions. We develop a framework to judge the distributional and procedural justice provisions within the recently adopted National Energy and Climate Plans, as an indicator of the power, ability and resolve of relevant institutions to combat the causes and consequences of energy injustice. We also provide a research and policy agenda for future action, highlighting a series of scientific and decision-making challenges in the European and global context.
A household's vulnerability to energy poverty is socially and spatially variable. Efforts to measure energy poverty, however, have focused on narrow, expenditure-based metrics or area-based ...targeting. These metrics are not spatial per se, because the relative importance of drivers does not vary between neighborhoods to reflect localized challenges. Despite recent advancements in geographically weighted methodologies that have the potential to yield important information about the sociospatial distribution of vulnerability to energy poverty, the phenomenon has not been approached from this perspective. For a case study of England, global principal component analysis (PCA) and local geographically weighted PCA (GWPCA) are applied to a suite of neighborhood-scale vulnerability indicators. The explicit spatiality of this methodological approach addresses a common criticism of vulnerability assessments. The global PCA reaffirms the importance of well-established vulnerabilities, including older age, disability, and energy efficiency. It also demonstrates striking new evidence of vulnerabilities among precarious and transient households that are less well understood and have become starker during austerity. In contrast, rather than providing a single estimate of propensity to energy poverty for neighborhoods based on a national understanding of what drives the condition, the GWPCA identifies a diverse array of vulnerability factors of greatest importance in different locales. These local results destabilize the geographical configurations of an urban-rural and north-south divide that typify understandings of deprivation in this context. The geographically weighted approach therefore draws attention to vulnerabilities often hidden in policymaking, allowing for reflection on the applicability of spatially constituted methodologies to wider social vulnerability assessments. Key Words: energy poverty, geographically weighted PCA, GIS, spatial analysis, vulnerability.
Cities in China have undergone considerable transformation in recent decades with unprecedented economic growth, rural to urban migration and a rapidly emerging middle class all contributing to ...increased energy consumption. In this context, we investigate the inability of urban households in the cold climate zone in northern China to access sufficient domestic energy services, and thus their vulnerability to energy poverty, focusing upon heating provision. Results of a questionnaire survey of households in the urban area of Beijing (n = 880) are analysed using Latent Class Analysis, a methodologically novel approach to developing a typology of energy poverty. The analysis highlights vulnerabilities that increase the likelihood of a household being unable to access adequate heating in the home in this context. Despite provision of state-subsidies for heating in cities in northern China, a mechanism that might be anticipated to buffer households from energy poverty, these do not shield from the cold those households that lack access to efficient and flexible networked infrastructures, or a high quality, built environment. Our findings represent the first detailed study of energy poverty in relation to heating in this geographical context and have significant implications for domestic policy-making concerned with energy poverty, residential energy efficiency and energy consumption.
EVALUATE is a multi-sited study, involving extensive research across a variety of cities and countries. Focusing primarily on four Central and Eastern European cities (Budapest, Gdańsk, Prague and ...Skopje) the project has undertaken a customized survey with 2435 households, supplemented with insights from in-depth household interviews, ‘energy diaries’ and energy efficiency audits in the homes of approximately 160 households living in the four cities. EVALUATE has entailed 195 expert interviews in a much wider range of sites across the world, as well as an analysis of micro-data from national and European Union surveys of energy poverty. It has led to more than 200 dissemination activities, while laying the basis for the European Energy Poverty Observatory as well as a new European Co-operation for Science and Technology Action on ‘European Energy Poverty: Agenda Co-Creation and Knowledge Innovation’
•We investigate the geographical features of fuel poverty using different indicators.•We compare the spatial distribution of fuel poverty using a 10% and LIHC indicator.•The shift to a LIHC indicator ...has disproportionately affected regions with lower housing costs.•Using a LIHC indicator there is a higher prevalence of fuel poverty in urban areas.•Using a LIHC indicator there are fewer fuel poverty ‘hot-spots’ and ‘cold-spots’.•The results have implications for targeting of fuel poverty alleviation resources.
Recognition of the negative impacts of fuel poverty, a lack of sufficient energy services in the home, has generated considerable interest in how the phenomenon can best be measured. Subsequently, the most well-known indicators deployed in policy-making, the established 10% indicator and the recent Low Income High Cost (LIHC) indicator, have generated considerable discussion and critique. One facet of the debate that remains unexplored is the effect of a change in indicator upon the spatial distribution of fuel poverty. Using spatial analyses we interrogate sub-regional estimates of the two indicators in England, where the LIHC indicator was first conceived. Three principle findings are discussed, enhancing understanding of the geographic features of fuel poverty as understood by each indicator. Firstly, the reduction in fuel poor households has disproportionately affected areas with lower housing costs. Secondly, there is a higher prevalence of fuel poverty in urban areas. Finally, the condition is more spatially heterogeneous with fewer ‘hot-spots’ and ‘cold-spots’. As a result, each indicator captures different notions of what it means to be fuel poor, representing particular vulnerabilities, losses of wellbeing and injustices. This has implications for the targeting of limited alleviation resources and for alternative national contexts where the LIHC indicator might be deployed.
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