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Fuel poverty in residential housing: providing financial support versus combatting substandard housing

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  • Dorothée Charlier
  • Berangère Legendre
  • Anna Risch

Abstract

Between 50 and 125 million Europeans are unable to afford the energy needed for adequate heating, cooking, light and use of appliances in the home. Tackling fuel poverty has thus become a public policy challenge. In this article, we assess the effectiveness of social energy subsidies and social housing to reduce fuel poverty. The literature reports that rising fuel prices, low incomes and energy-inefficient housing are the main causes of fuel poverty. Existing public policies focus mainly on price- and income-based measures to reduce fuel poverty, such as social energy subsidies. This type of policy is palliative as it does not permit to sustainably eradicate fuel poverty. Other policies aim to encourage renovation in order to improve energy efficiency. Those policies are curative as they sustainably reduce one cause of fuel poverty: energy inefficiency. In this article, we focus on another public policy to tackle fuel poverty: social housing. We believe that this policy could be preventive, as the literature reports the better energy efficiency of social housing. We use matching methods and find that living in social housing decreases fuel poverty by 5.4% to 9.1%. On the contrary, social energy subsidies have no effect on fuel poverty.

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  • Dorothée Charlier & Berangère Legendre & Anna Risch, 2019. "Fuel poverty in residential housing: providing financial support versus combatting substandard housing," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(49), pages 5369-5387, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:51:y:2019:i:49:p:5369-5387
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2019.1613501
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    Cited by:

    1. Pillai, Arya & Tovar Reaños, Miguel & Curtis, John, 2022. "Fuel poverty in Ireland: an analysis of trends and profiles," Papers WP729, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    2. Ye, Yuxiang & Koch, Steven F., 2021. "Measuring energy poverty in South Africa based on household required energy consumption," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    3. Yiming Xiao & Han Wu & Guohua Wang & Hong Mei, 2021. "Mapping the Worldwide Trends on Energy Poverty Research: A Bibliometric Analysis (1999–2019)," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-22, February.
    4. Keyu Chen & Chao Feng, 2022. "Linking Housing Conditions and Energy Poverty: From a Perspective of Household Energy Self-Restriction," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(14), pages 1-17, July.
    5. Charlier, Dorothée & Legendre, Bérangère, 2021. "Fuel poverty in industrialized countries: Definition, measures and policy implications a review," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).
    6. Luan, Bingjiang & Zou, Hong & Huang, Junbing, 2023. "Digital divide and household energy poverty in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    7. Reanos, Miguel Tovar & Curtis, John & Pillai, Arya & Meier, David, 2023. "Fuel poverty and financial literacy: Evidence from Irish home owners," Papers WP751, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    8. Charlier, Dorothée, 2021. "Explaining the energy performance gap in buildings with a latent profile analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    9. Dorothée Charlier, 2021. "Explaining the energy performance gap in buildings with a latent profile analysis," Post-Print hal-03894155, HAL.

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