IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oec/ctpaaa/30-en.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The impact of energy taxes on the affordability of domestic energy

Author

Listed:
  • Florens Flues
  • Kurt van Dender

Abstract

Energy affordability can be defined as a household’s ability to pay for necessary levels of energy use within normal spending patterns. This paper uses three indicators to measure energy affordability risk in 20 OECD countries. Energy affordability risk differs widely between countries. The countries with the highest GDP per capita tend to have the lowest levels of energy affordability risk. The paper then analyses how indicators of energy affordability change in response to a hypothetical tax reform that increases taxes on natural gas, heating oil and electricity in most countries analysed. Results show that, if combined with an income-tested cash transfer using one third of the change in revenue resulting from the tax reform, the reform generally improves energy affordability. If combined with a lump-sum transfer instead, results show that energy affordability increases only according to the most selective of the three indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Florens Flues & Kurt van Dender, 2017. "The impact of energy taxes on the affordability of domestic energy," OECD Taxation Working Papers 30, OECD Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:oec:ctpaaa:30-en
    DOI: 10.1787/08705547-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1787/08705547-en
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1787/08705547-en?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Herwig Immervoll & Cathal O’Donoghue & Jules Linden & Denisa Sologon, 2023. "Who pays for higher carbon prices?: Illustration for Lithuania and a research agenda," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 283, OECD Publishing.
    2. Heindl, Peter & Schüßler, Rudolf, 2019. "A deprivation-based assessment of energy poverty: Conceptual problems and application to Germany," ZEW Discussion Papers 19-036, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    3. Pierce O’Reilly, 2018. "Tax policies for inclusive growth in a changing world," OECD Taxation Working Papers 40, OECD Publishing.
    4. Schmeling, Lucas & Schönfeldt, Patrik & Klement, Peter & Vorspel, Lena & Hanke, Benedikt & von Maydell, Karsten & Agert, Carsten, 2022. "A generalised optimal design methodology for distributed energy systems," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1223-1239.
    5. Nils Ohlendorf & Michael Jakob & Jan Christoph Minx & Carsten Schröder & Jan Christoph Steckel, 2021. "Distributional Impacts of Carbon Pricing: A Meta-Analysis," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 78(1), pages 1-42, January.
    6. Vassil Tsanov & Georgi Shopov, 2018. "Material Standard of Living and Energy Poverty in Bulgaria: State and Development," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 3-20.
    7. Christophe André & Hyunjeong Hwang, 2018. "Tax reform to support growth and employment in Finland," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1468, OECD Publishing.
    8. Robert Hagemann, 2018. "Tax Policies for Inclusive Growth: Prescription versus Practice," OECD Economic Policy Papers 24, OECD Publishing.
    9. Nils Ohlendorf & Michael Jakob & Jan Christoph Minx & Carsten Schröder & Jan Christoph Steckel, 2018. "Distributional Impacts of Climate Mitigation Policies - a Meta-Analysis," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1776, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    10. Christine Lewis, 2019. "Raising more public revenue in Indonesia in a growth - and equity-friendly way," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1534, OECD Publishing.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    carbon pricing; distributional effects; energy affordability; energy poverty; energy taxation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oec:ctpaaa:30-en. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ctoecfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.