A warm welcome or a poor pick? Exploring energy poverty and inequality in the transition to a heat network in Delft

Energy poverty is an increasingly important issue. While vulnerable households are especially at risk in the energy transition, energy poverty effects of the transition are unknown. In Delft, a district heating network based on geothermal energy is planned. The distributive justice aspects of heat networks in the heating transition remain...

Beyond headcount statistics: Exploring the utility of energy poverty gap indices in policy design

Recent energy price spikes have led to increased energy poverty among low-income households living in inefficient homes. Accurate statistics on energy poverty help inform resource allocation and better target relief schemes and retrofit funds. Existing indicators are predominantly defined in terms of a headcount ratio – the share of population...

The Renovation Wave: An opportunity to tackle energy poverty?: A Case Study-Mixed Methods (CS-MM) approach to including justice in renovation policies considering the socio-spatial vulnerability to energy poverty

In the wake of tackling energy poverty by its roots and protecting vulnerable groups, the European Commission introduced the so-called Renovation Wave, aiming to renovate 35 million inefficient buildings by 2050. However, even though the Renovation Wave was aimed to tackle energy poverty, recent studies have shown that renovation policies have...

Understanding forest biomass energy policy mix impact on energy poverty: A Case Study of Sofia, Bulgaria

Energy transition has become the lead focus of the European Union (EU) agenda. The introduction of European Green Deal (EGD) has further raised the targets regarding greenhouse gas emissions, Renewable Energy (RE) and Energy Efficiency (EE) and strengthened legislation concerning the circular economy and biodiversity. Forest biomass energy has...

Energy Efficiency and Energy Poverty in Dutch Households: How Housing-related Factors Determine the Residential Energy Consumption and Energy Affordability in the Netherlands

The residential energy consumption and energy affordability are crucial in policy design, with regard to energy efficiency and energy poverty. This has become even more relevant now, as the energy transition is taking off and the energy prices are soaring. Given the inequality in the energy consumption and energy affordability, it is therefore...

Household energy efficiency and energy poverty in Serbia: Delineating optimal policy recommendations to achieve sustainable goals set by the European Commission

Energy poverty, understood as a situation in which one household is not able to afford essential domestic energy services, is a phenomenon spread throughout Europe. In the following study, the Republic of Serbia will be considered specifically. The latter is, as other Western Balkan countries, affected by inefficient dwellings and housing...

Syn-energy: An interconnected, renewable and fair energy system in South Holland, by 2050

Our society is dealing with multiple wicked problems: the Climate Crisis, poverty, inequality and our need for a sustainable and healthy environment to live in. The Climate Crisis increases the urge to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels and requires a structural transformation to our management and distribution of space, economy and community...

Decoding the vector of energy poverty: Understanding the components of energy systems in the urban-rural context of NCR, India

Energy poverty means the lack of access to proper electricity and clean energy fuels. This type of poverty is closely linked to the dichotomy between developed and developing regions. This project argues that tackling energy poverty first needs to be addressed by understanding energy injustice between the urban and rural areas of developing...

Assessing technological alternatives to reduce Energy Poverty in Mexico

More than half of Mexico’s population is living in a type of poverty, recognized as a multidimensional challenge with a geographical context. Even though Mexico’s poverty is measured in a multifaceted way, the concept of Energy Poverty has not been studied, per se, by governmental institutions. It is until recently that the study of this concept...

Spatial homogeneity and heterogeneity of energy poverty: a neglected dimension

Since the 1970s, a variety of studies has searched for the sociodemographic, housing and economic determinants of energy poverty. A central question, however, has not been answered by any of the previous studies: what are the national-level determinants, i.e. the determinants that homogeneously provoke a high level of energy poverty in all...

Towards an ethnography of electrification in rural India: Social relations and values in household energy exchanges

Many energy researchers and practitioners envision householders to have an active role in local energy distribution in emerging energy systems. In the energy literature, the dominant view of local energy distribution, grounded in the rational choice perspective, sees exchanges of energy between households as energy trading. The existing...