Book Description

Energy poverty - often understood as a situation where a household cannot meet its domestic energy needs - is subject to increasing policy attention within the European Union (EU). Alleviating energy poverty is a key precondition for achieving just transitions towards sustainability. The EU Energy Poverty Observatory (EPOV) is a European Commission (EC) project aiming to measure, monitor and share knowledge on energy poverty. This is the third of a series of pan-EU reports issued by the Observatory, offering a comprehensive perspective on current and forthcoming measures to address energy poverty across the EU. The report supplements the rich repository of statistics, best practices, training resources and relevant organisations collected by the Observatory since 2016, and presented on the EPOV portal at https://www.energypoverty.eu. The report consists of two sections, the first of which examines policies and measures to address energy poverty across the EU, while the second presents the latest statistics on energy poverty. Both sections offer state-of-the art knowledge and evidence on ongoing efforts to address the problem, as well as its distribution and character across the EU. In the policies and measures section, we examine the different energy poverty alleviation and mitigation policies and measures adopted at the EU, Member State (MS), regional and local level. The report contains one of the hitherto most comprehensive and timely reviews of national and local-scale initiatives in this domain. There is also a review of the different approaches taken by various international bodies in response to the energy poverty challenge. For the first time in the existing literature on the subject, this section also contains an analysis of energy poverty-relevant provisions in the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) issued by EU MS, as well as an investigation of COVID-19 responses across the EU as regards the energy-income nexus. We provide a systemic evaluation of energy poverty relevant provisions in the NECPs as well as COVID-19 policies. In the statistics section, we provide an up to date overview of energy poverty indicators and trends. overview of headline statistics, and trends over time. Because energy poverty is a multi-dimensional problem, this section of the report also presents a segmented examination of the condition according to income, degree of urbanisation, tenure, and dwelling type. The report concludes by synthesising the results of these analyses, and emphasising avenues for future action to address the problem. These include need for better data collection, as well as the continued compilation and evaluation of best practices in the context of the Clean Energy Package and the European Green Deal.