As energy prices are increasing, the issue of energy poverty becomes even more relevant. How are European countries considering energy poverty in policies? Ana Stojilovska, Research Fellow at the Institute for Political Science led a group of researchers to explore whether, how, and why policy documents in Spain, France, Portugal, the UK, North Macedonia, and Slovenia link energy poverty to other related policy areas. The study was published in Energy Policy with an impact factor of 7.576. The paper has been prepared within the framework of the COST-funded ENGAGER network.

The study suggests that the most explicit links to energy poverty are made in energy efficiency policies rather than in energy price and income policies, due to the dominant techno-economic approach to addressing energy poverty. As countries with a long tradition of addressing energy poverty, France and the UK integrate energy poverty to a greater extent in linked policies. Policy integration is reflected in EU efforts to include energy poverty in climate and energy policies. Emerging debates linked to energy poverty include good governance, citizens’ agency, new energy services, and new threats from the energy transition. The spatial divide of energy poverty across Europe is more than a physical (infrastructural) divide. It is a policy (political) divide embedded in the economic and political space co-shaped by national path dependencies, such as the social welfare system, the energy market, the level of experience of dealing with energy poverty, and the influence of EU policies. These conditions determine the national policy integration efforts linked to energy poverty.

Access to the paper: Stojilovska, A., Guyet, R., Mahoney, K., Gouveia, J.P., Castaño-Rosa, R., Živčič, L., Barbosa, R. and Tkalec, T. 2022. Energy poverty and emerging debates: Beyond the traditional triangle of energy poverty drivers. Energy Policy 169 113181 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113181