Netherlands Case study

Abstract

This case study is produced as part of the IEA Users TCP Research Programme: Empowering all. Gender in policy and implementation for achieving transitions to sustainable energy. It contributes to providing an understanding of the systematic inertias in the sociotechnical energy system that appear to be hindering the development and implementation of gender aware energy policies. The case study focuses on a condition known as ‘energy poverty’ and how it is currently addressed in the context of the Netherlands. The case study looks how the issue of energy poverty is framed and policy responses are formulated in the Netherlands. It identifies which government actors are involved in addressing energy poverty and assess whether there is sufficient capacity to respond, particularly in a gender-aware way, to a complex, multi-dimensional problem. It draws on an exploratory study which set out to gain insights into the mindsets of municipal policy workers in the Netherland working on mitigating energy poverty (Kreuger, 2023). The findings of the study are supported by a literature review. The data analysis uses the concept of energy justice which provides an understanding of how benefits, costs and risks of the energy transition are distributed in a society across three dimensions which provide an analytical framework: distribution, procedural and recognitional 1. A gender lens is applied to the framework, to provide a more nuanced understanding of how the energy transition may unevenly distribute benefits, costs and risks, thereby producing new inequalities or exacerbating existing ones. This analysis can be taken a step further by using an intersectional approach that disaggregates data across different groups without prioritising one category of social difference, such as income levels (Yuval-Davis 2016).