Energy poverty vulnerability index: A multidimensional tool to identify hotspots for local action

By João Gouveia, P. Palma, S. Simoes. Energy Reports, 2019

194 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Energy poverty is a growing societal challenge that puts the welfare of many European citizens at risk. Several different indicators have been developed with the objective of assessing this phenomenon. The aim of this work is to develop a novel high-resolution spatial scale composite index, focusing on space heating and cooling, to map energy poor regions and identify hotspots for local action. The proposed index (EPVI) combines socio-economic indicators of the population (AIAM sub-index) with building’s characteristics and energy performance (EPG sub-index). The method was tested for all 3092 civil parishes of Portugal and could be potentially replicated at Pan European scale. Results show a higher prevalence of significative EPVIs in the inland region and the islands, particularly in rural civil parishes. Although cooling EPVIs are generally higher, heating may be a more significant issue in terms of energy demand and health hazard. Energy poverty vulnerability assessment at such a disaggregated regional scale could bridge the gap between common overall country analyses and local-scale initiatives targeting vulnerable households. The outcomes of this paper support national and local energy efficiency policies and instruments while fostering better assessments and enabling local actions for tackling this problem.

Subfields: Energy Engineering and Power Technology, Global and Planetary Change, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1a8aa010d7f9dbb21132a3a649891270510eae40

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Citations in the corpus

Objective vs. subjective fuel poverty and self-assessed health (2020, background): “The role of geographic setting in fuel poverty has recently gained relevance (Fahmy et al., 2011; Robinson et al., 2018; Besagni and Borgarello, 2019; Gouveia et al., 2019; Horta et al., 2019; Mashhoodi et al., 2019; Recalde et al., 2019; Sánchez-Guevara et al., 2019).”
Energy poverty in Portugal: Combining vulnerability mapping with household interviews (2019, methodology): “More details about the regional diversities of all the indicators used and a full overview of the country results can be found in Gouveia et al. [22] .”
A multidimensional index to measure energy poverty: the Polish case (2020, unknown): “Thomson and Snell (2013), and Gouveia, Palma, and Simoes (2019) calculated composite indices of energy poverty, while Bollino and Botti (2018) computed a compound indicator based on fuzzy sets methodology.”
European energy poverty metrics: Scales, prospects and limits (2020, unknown): “[87] for all the 3,092 Portuguese civil parishes.”