A Broader Conceptualisation of Fuel Poverty: Contributions from the Human Development Approach (original) (raw)
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Fuel Poverty Through a Human Rights Lens
Human rights law provides a set of basic rules designed to protect human dignity. Poverty (and fuel poverty) can affect the enjoyment of several human rights protections including the right to life, freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment, adequate housing, food and health. These are found in international, regional and domestic legal instruments with snazzy titles like the European Convention on Human Rights 1952 (ECHR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966 (ICESCR) – although anathema to some parts of the political spectrum, these rights are an important part of the UK’s legal system. This post provides an introduction to the relationship between human rights and fuel poverty in the UK, focussing on the rights to life and housing. First published in http://fuelpoverty.eu/blog/ on 22 July 2015.
Readjusting the Political Thermostat: Fuel Poverty and Human Rights in the UK
Journal of Human Rights in the Commonwealth, 2016
Fuel poverty − the inability to afford adequate warmth in the home − is a widespread problem across the UK. Cold, damp homes are detrimental to human health and contribute to thousands of ‘excess winter deaths’ every year. This article analyses fuel poverty from a human rights perspective – asking whether it engages human rights protections. It first discusses the definition, scale and health impacts of the problem. Second, it explores the relationship between fuel poverty and the rights contained within the European Convention on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the European Social Charter. It concludes that fuel poverty readily engages rights to adequate housing, food and health; and certain civil and political rights in extreme circumstances. It discusses the legal implications of these findings for fuel poverty policy, arguing for a ‘human rights approach’ to tackling the problem. These conclusions focus on the particularly drastic fuel poverty situation in the UK, but can also be applied globally to the various nations where citizens suffer similar problems and extend to the wider debate on the relationship between poverty and human rights. Co-written with Ben Christman. Citation: Ben Christman and Hannah Russell, 'Readjusting the Political Thermostat: Fuel Poverty and Human Rights in the UK' (2016) 2(2) Journal of Human Rights in the Commonwealth.
Fuel Poverty: Perspectives from the front line
Fuel poverty, namely the ability for a household to afford to heat its home to an adequate standard, is a fairly recent concept. Despite recognition of the problem in the early 20th century, it wasn’t until the late 1970’s that Fuel Poverty was recognised as a problem and not until 1997 that government officially adopted the term. With the introduction of the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act (WHECA) in 2000 (Great Britain, 2000) fuel poverty was formally defined within UK government legislation. The prevalence of fuel poverty within the United kingdom has been exacerbated by a number a number of climatic and historical factors including the mild, temperate climate, domestic building heritage, preference for open fires and ‘fresh air’ and evolving thermal expectations. This, combined with a low turnover of buildings has resulted in over 50% of the English population living in housing built to a poor standard, with a focus on air circulation constructed prior to the introduction of thermal regulations in 1965. A fuel poor household is currently defined as: “...one which needs to spend more than 10% of its income on all fuel use and to heat its home to an adequate standard of warmth.” (DEFRA and DTI, 2001, p.6) Whilst the above definition benefits from measuring modelled energy requirements, it is overly sensitive to price changes and suffers from a number of other issues and technical complications. The Townsend Centre for International Poverty research took a census-based approach to measuring fuel poverty. The report highlighted the lack of overlap between households identified as fuel poor through objective measures compared to those reported as fuel poor by subjective measurement. It also demonstrated the impact of income consideration in measuring fuel poverty, criticising the current measures approach (Fahmy et al., 2011). The Hills review also criticised this aspect of the current measure and offered a new conception of fuel poverty measuring both the extent and depth of the problem (Hills, 2011, 2012). Fuel poverty impacts upon multiple areas of policy and is not just the concern of the Department for Energy and Climate Change. Perhaps the most significant impact is on health, with a close correlation between excess winter deaths, cardio-vascular disease, respiratory problems and mental health. As well as physical health, social health is also affected as fuel poverty alleviation reduces anti-social behaviour and other associated social ills. It also impacts on housing policy through consideration of development, housing legislation and retrofit issues. Accurate measurement of fuel poverty is vital for measurement of the success or otherwise of the Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation. Many policy documents and other fuel poverty literature refer to the concept of stakeholders, but with no definition of what they mean by this or who they are. Through the inclusion of stakeholder perspectives via their first hand experience of living or dealing with fuel poverty at both a practical and a strategic level a more detailed measure of fuel poverty can be developed that will not only allow future policy and interventions to be more accurately targeted towards the most needy households but also capture more precisely the impact of policies such as the Green Deal and ECO in the reduction of fuel poverty.
Energy Research & Social Science, 2015
This paper offers an integrated conceptual framework for the research and amelioration of energy deprivation in the home. It starts from the premise that all forms of energy and fuel poverty-in developed and developing countries alike-are underpinned by a common condition: the inability to attain a socially and materially necessitated level of domestic energy services. We consider the functionings provided by energy demand in the residential domain in order to advance two claims: first, that domestic energy deprivation in its different guises and forms is fundamentally tied to the ineffective operation of the socio-technical pathways that allow for the fulfilment of household energy needs, and as such is best analyzed by understanding the constitution of different energy services (heating, lighting, etc.) in the home. Second, we emphasize the ability of vulnerability thinking to encapsulate the driving forces of domestic energy deprivation via a comprehensive analytical matrix. The paper identifies the main components and implications of energy service and vulnerability approaches as they relate to domestic energy deprivation across the world.
Energy Policy, 2012
Bringing attention to fuel poverty as a distinct manifestation of social inequality has asserted the place of affordable warmth in the profile of contemporary rights and entitlements. As such, fuel poverty can be understood as an expression of injustice, involving the compromised ability to access energy services and thereby to secure a healthful living environment. In this paper, we consider how fuel poverty may be aligned to various alternative concepts of social and environmental justice. Whilst recognising that fuel poverty is fundamentally a complex problem of distributive injustice, we argue that other understandings of injustice are also implicated and play important roles in producing and sustaining inequalities in access to affordable warmth. Addressing fuel poverty has to involve seeking justice in terms of the cultural and political recognition of vulnerable and marginalised social groups and pursuing procedural justice through opening up involvement and influence in decision-making processes. We make this argument both in theoretical terms, and through considering the experience of fuel poverty advocacy and policy development in the UK. Opportunities for future action may be illuminated through such interconnected justice framings as wider awareness of energy, climate and poverty issues emerge.
The political economy of energy poverty: A review of key challenges
Energy for Sustainable Development, 2012
This review specifically investigates the concepts of energy poverty and energy ladders. It provides the most current available data on energy poverty, electrification, and dependency on biomass fuels for cooking. It elaborates on the relationship between energy access and millennium development goals, especially the connection between modern energy services and development, public health, gender empowerment, and the degradation of the natural environment. It notes that energy poverty has serious and growing public health concerns related to indoor air pollution, physical injury during fuelwood collection, and lack of refrigeration and medical care in areas that lack electricity. It argues that energy poverty affects both the gender roles within society and the educational opportunities available to children and adults. It documents that the environmental impacts of energy poverty encompass deforestation and changes in land use, as well as the emission of greenhouse gases. The final section of the review underscores the structural elements of the global energy system that entrench and sustain energy poverty.
Trapped in the heat: A post-communist type of fuel poverty
Energy Policy, 2012
Fuel poverty is a still insufficiently researched social and energy challenge with significant climate change implications. Based on evidence from Hungarian panel apartment blocks connected to district heating, this paper introduces a new variant of fuel poverty that may not be properly captured by existing fuel poverty indicators. This newly defined variant can be largely attributed to post-communist legacies -though it might also exist in other contexts -and assumes that consumers living in poorefficiency, district-heated buildings are trapped in dwellings with adequate indoor temperatures but disproportionately high heating costs because (a) changing supplier or fuel is difficult because of the existing technical and institutional constraints, and (b) they do not realistically have the option to reduce individually their heating costs through individual efficiency improvements. This situation often translates into payment arrears, indebtedness, risk of disconnection, or reduced consumption of other basic goods and services. State-supported policy responses to date have favoured symptomatic solutions (direct consumer support) combined with superficial retrofits, though it is argued that only state-of-the-art retrofits such as the passive house-based SOLANOVA pilot project in Dunaú jvá ros can fully eradicate fuel poverty in this consumer group. (S. Tirado Herrero). 1 The authors are aware of the apparent terminological existing in the literature. On the one hand, fuel poverty is the original term coined in the UK for referring to the inability to afford an adequate amount of energy services . On the other hand, key references for the CEE (Buzar, 2007) and institutional sources like the Directive 2009/72/EC refer to the same phenomenon as energy poverty, though other sources define it as the lack of access to quality energy services, a prevailing condition in many developing nations (e.g., . In this paper, we prefer the more widely used term (in English) of fuel poverty, acknowledging that the affordability of energy services (rather than the access) is a key element.
From Fuel Poverty to Energy Vulnerability: The Importance of Services, Needs and Practices
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Addressing Multidimensional Energy Poverty Implications on Achieving Sustainable Development
Energies
This study examines whether shifts in the stance of policymaking can account for the observed predictability in excess energy poverty (EP) or fuel poverty (FP) levels. Energy-related poverty is a subcategory of global poverty and can be categorized into accessibility problems related to EP and affordability issues associated with FP, which have a similar but not identical meaning. Furthermore, developed and developing countries have different energy issues, as the former deal with FP and the latter with EP. However, there are discrepancies in EP not only between countries but within counties as well; for instance, there are differences in urban and rural areas too. Difficulties in energy access can be devastating for people living at risk of poverty. Social welfare, although at stake due to the energy crisis sparked at the same time as the warfare in eastern Europe. Renewables and green fossil fuels have price fluctuations, and inflation is also a stress factor in EP. Generally, sol...