Energy poverty. How can you fight it, if you can’t measure it?

Abstract

Energy poverty is a complex and multidimensional problem, lying at the intersection between household income, energy costs and the energy efficiency of the housing stock. Despite a growing interest and several new initiatives to contrast energy poverty, there are still relevant problems regarding its definition and measurement. In this work, we review the existing definitions, measures and policies with a specific focus on Italy. We present an indicator developed in a èr Faiella and Lavecchia (2015) and recently adopted by the Government as the official measure of energy poverty for Italy. According to this indicator, in 2016 there were over 2.2 million energy-poor households or 8.6% of the total. We also introduce a new indicator of energy poverty, independent from households’ preferences, derived from the heating expenditure needed to achieve a minimum comfort level. According to this new measure, there were around 3 million fuel poor households in 2014–16 (11.7% of all households).