Impacts of energy prices on fuel poverty and its implications for the Just Transition

Project Description

This project provides guidance and support for implementing social and retrofit policies to address fuel poverty by improving its measurement and targeting. The project will employ expenditure data and state-of-the-art methods and propose metrics that consider the burden faced by households who must reduce energy consumption and the consumption of other commodities (such as food, rent, education, and transportation) due to a generalized increase in price levels and the ongoing energy crisis.

Based on the economic literature, the project will quantify energy subsistence levels to provide evidence of the necessary level of transfers to tackle fuel poverty. Regarding targeting, the project will also identify the profiles of households in fuel poverty, and their changes across time. This will include income, rural, household composition, and gender characteristics. The project will quantify changes in fuel poverty and carbon emissions resulting from increases in subsidies for energy efficiency, as well as universal and targeted transfers. Using a bespoke survey, the project will investigate households’ willingness to invest in energy efficiency under different grants and information levels. The project will also quantify the role of energy and financial knowledge in adopting mitigation strategies to face high energy bills (e.g., switching energy suppliers) and adopting energy efficiency measures.