Abstract
The increase of energy access to households has been a global priority. By 2018, 89.59% of the world population had access to electricity, while 97.26% of the persons living in urban areas (The Mexican Government reports it at 99.99%) had access. We must now move beyond access to electricity and address energy poverty in urban spaces. A household is energy poor when their inhabitants are incapable of securing proper domestic energy services. Several different methodologies were developed to measure energy poverty. The Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) by Nussbaumer has been successfully used in Africa and in Latin-America. The MEPI considers five dimensions: cooking, lighting, household appliances, entertainment/education and communication. We developed a Multidimensional Energy Deprivation Index (MEDI), based on MEPI. Thermal comfort has been included as sixth dimension, by considering the temperature of the region where the household is located. We found important differences between MEPI and MEDI for Mexico at the national level (urban-MEPI at 0.028 vs. 0.071 urban-MEDI, which implies a higher degree of energy poverty). Also, differences between geopolitical and bioclimatic regions were found. Having better ways to assess energy poverty in the urban context is a key factor to develop effective public policies that might alleviate it.
Highlights
IntroductionAround half of the world’s population lives in cities, and for the year 2050, 70% of the world inhabitants is predicted to live in urban settlements [3]
The extreme temperatures in the bioclimatic region were used, meaning that the minimum temperature among the municipalities of the region was set as tmin and the maximum temperature among the municipalities of the region was set as tmax
Few papers address the evaluation of energy poverty in urban spaces and take into consideration thermal comfort and the climatic features of the evaluated regions
Summary
Around half of the world’s population lives in cities, and for the year 2050, 70% of the world inhabitants is predicted to live in urban settlements [3]. Cities account for between 60% and 80% of energy consumption and near 75% of carbon emissions, despite the fact that hey only occupy 3% of the Earth’s surface [3]. The United Nations (UN) acknowledges the importance of cities in sustainable development, and for the accomplishment of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11: For sustainable cities and communities, addressing urban energy poverty is imperative
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