Abstract
Home-heating energy-poverty risk presents both challenge and opportunity for policymakers, businesses and communities. Effective measurement and management of this risk requires an evidence base that accounts for characteristics of the householder, building, and heating system. A composite index utilising 10 indicators refined to Small Area level is created to deliver spatially refined analysis of home-heating energy-poverty risk. The index is used to assess home-heating energy-poverty risk across 18,641 Small Area clusters in Ireland. This risk index is a scalable and internationally transferrable methodology that can be extended to cover other energy uses. Importantly the index is also dynamic and offers the capacity to analyse changes in energy-poverty risk associated with specific policy intervention proposals, including major contemporary environmental policy transitions such as residential fabric retrofit, residential heating system changes, energy price changes and carbon taxation. The application of the index to the Irish case affords refined insight into the impact and incidence of various market, technology and policy driven interventions such as fuel price changes, retrofit strategies and carbon tax increases. Risk and impacts vary geographically, and this index is designed to inform targeted policy interventions to mitigate home heating energy-poverty risk and thereby support ambitions for a ‘just transition’.
Highlights
Policy actions and interventions to reduce climate and air pollutant emissions may affect fuel prices, energy efficiency requirements and fuel choices
In this regard, the Home Heating Energy Poverty Risk Index (HH-EPRI) has been designed with a relevant basket of indicators that allows analysis of how, and where, home heating energy poverty risk may change in response to specific policy interventions such as tax changes, fuel bans or a building fabric retrofitting program
At a time when nations across Europe and the world are developing, imple menting and incentivising such actions to reduce energy use and curtail greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions, the HH-EPRI provides a valuable tool for designing better policies that can deliver the necessary changes, as well as identifying targeted supporting actions that can mitigate or manage any excessive rise in energy poverty risk amongst the vulnerable
Summary
Policy actions and interventions to reduce climate and air pollutant emissions may affect fuel prices, energy efficiency requirements and fuel choices. Whilst it is possible to survey households and individuals to generate more refined estimations of energy poverty, such surveys are both timeconsuming and costly More importantly they normally provide a sub jective assessment by the household of their own fuel-poverty risk, health characteristics and/or the energy characteristics of the home, and there are considerable challenges when seeking to elicit detailed household income and expenditure data as part of such a process. This paper contributes to addressing these challenges by developing a dynamic and evidence-based spatial energy-poverty risk index system that can evaluate, on a fine scale basis, shifts in home heating energy poverty risk associated with specific interventions.
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