Prejudices May Be Wrong: Exploring Spatial Patterns of Vulnerability to Energy Poverty in Italian Metropolitan Areas

Energy poverty has impressive negative effects on people’s health. Alleviating energy poverty is crucial for a just and equitable transition. However, policies and attempts to reduce energy poverty present a challenge to researchers and policymakers due to its complexity. The lack of a clear definition, of a common set of metrics to assess its multiple dimensions, and of spatially explicit assessments represent serious shortcomings that hinder effective policy design. This paper aims to explore the relevance and spatial distribution of the determinants of vulnerability to energy poverty to support the design of effective responses at different scales. To this end, a principal component (PCA) and a geographically weighted principal component analysis (GWPCA) are conducted on more than 1300 municipalities in 15 Italian metropolitan areas, to identify the spatial patterns of vulnerability to energy poverty and its causes. The PCA highlights three main components of vulnerability to energy poverty in the study areas, respectively, related to the job condition and to individual and households’ socioeconomic factors, which provide relevant insights for policies at the national level, The GWPCA provides more detailed information to effectively support policies at the local level. The novelty of this work is the comparison of results from a PCA and a GWPCA of their different contributions to policy design at different scales.