One out of five Spanish households in a situation of energy poverty have unemployed people
A study by the Chair of Energy Sustainability at Barcelona Institute of Economics-University of Barcelona analyses energy poverty from a perspective of the disposable incomes available to vulnerable groups.
22.1% of Spanish households in a situation of energy poverty have unemployed people, compared with 7.1% of households where this is not the case. This is one of the main figures revealed by the study entitled ‘Energy Poverty in Spain: An income-based approach’, conducted by the Chair of Energy Sustainability at IEB-University of Barcelona between 2011 and 2017. The study has been published by the Naturgy Foundation and was presented today at the seminar on ‘Policies and Measures against Energy Poverty’.
According to the research, led by professor María Teresa Costa-Campi at the University of Barcelona and conducted by researchers Elisenda Jové-Llopis and Elisa Trujillo-Baute, the likelihood of a household being in a situation of energy poverty increases by 9.3% when the main breadwinner is unemployed.
According to the study, an average of 8.3% of Spanish households are in a situation of energy poverty. This average reached its peak in 2013, at 9%. Since then, it fell gradually to its lowest in 2017, at 7.4%. This means that, 67,500 Spanish households emerged from a situation of energy poverty in approximately four years.
The study explains that “the data show that energy poverty is another facet of poverty in general, meaning that measures to ease energy poverty should be tackled alongside social policies that enable household incomes to be increased and with energy efficiency policies to foster cost reduction.”
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