The Spatially Varying Components of Vulnerability to Energy Poverty

Abstract

A household's vulnerability to energy poverty is socially and spatially variable. Efforts to measure energy poverty, however, have focused on narrow, expenditure-based metrics or area-based targeting. These metrics are not spatial per se, because the relative importance of drivers does not vary between neighborhoods to reflect localized challenges. Despite recent advancements in geographically weighted methodologies that have the potential to yield important information about the sociospatial distribution of vulnerability to energy poverty, the phenomenon has not been approached from this perspective. For a case study of England, global principal component analysis (PCA) and local geographically weighted PCA (GWPCA) are applied to a suite of neighborhood-scale vulnerability indicators. The explicit spatiality of this methodological approach addresses a common criticism of vulnerability assessments. The global PCA reaffirms the importance of well-established vulnerabilities, including older age, disability, and energy efficiency. It also demonstrates striking new evidence of vulnerabilities among precarious and transient households that are less well understood and have become starker during austerity. In contrast, rather than providing a single estimate of propensity to energy poverty for neighborhoods based on a national understanding of what drives the condition, the GWPCA identifies a diverse array of vulnerability factors of greatest importance in different locales. These local results destabilize the geographical configurations of an urban-rural and north-south divide that typify understandings of deprivation in this context. The geographically weighted approach therefore draws attention to vulnerabilities often hidden in policymaking, allowing for reflection on the applicability of spatially constituted methodologies to wider social vulnerability assessments.

Territorial Energy Vulnerability Assessment to Enhance Just Energy Transition of Cities

“…The effect of household characteristics on the probabilities of becoming energy poor is well known (Imbert et al, 2016;Belaïd, 2018;Primc et al, 2019), but recent literature has expressed the importance of a geographical analysis where energy poverty conditions can relate to phenomena occurring at a larger scale (Bouzarovski and Simcock, 2017;Robinson et al, 2019). Scientific literature offers at least two different ways to understand the spatial dimension of energy poverty.…”

“…First, some authors have emphasized the importance of spatializing energy poverty, e.g., understanding it through a spatial lens as an energy injustice problem (Bouzarovski and Simcock, 2017;Robinson et al, 2019). They have identified how spatial variables can explain energy poverty expressions more precisely than other variables like household socioeconomic conditions (Jimenez, 2017;Besagni and Borgarello, 2019;Mattioli et al, 2019).…”

“…Regarding this issue, there have been some notable contributions in this sense from Robinson et al (2019) and Mattioli et al (2019). These authors have made efforts to assess the occurrence of energy poverty at a smaller, neighborhood-like scale.…”

“…However, usually, there is a lack of attention to the "risk" component of energy security, especially considering the impacts of the new globally changing scenarios. Relevant scholarship on energy vulnerabilities (Middlemiss and Gillard, 2015;Petrova, 2018;Ioannidis et al, 2019;Mattioli et al, 2019;Robinson et al, 2019) has focused on household sensitivity toward energy poverty while neglecting a broader systemic perspective that integrates environmental hazards (e.g., climate change) and sociotechnical complexities (e.g., energy transitions as a source of uncertainty to some energy system actors). Some authors have emphasized that energy transitions can increase social vulnerability-rather than decreasing it-highlighting the need to consider the links between energy vulnerability and energy transitions from a geographical perspective .…”

Future Design Approaches for Energy Poverty: Users Profiling and Services for No-Vulnerable Condition

“…In fact, qualitative data are almost always collected through interviews and focus groups or with forms of participation usually adopted in social science disciplines. An increasing amount of studies is then focusing on the spatial aspects of the phenomenon, linking the role of the urban space with the poverty [36][37][38][39]. In fact, there are several aspects linked with the spatial approach: on the one hand, there are social connections at the neighborhood dimension that can mitigate energy poverty by creating chains of solidarity and support; on the other hand, the homogeneous district often has similar characteristics in terms of building performance and energy necessities.…”