FPRN bulletin – 21st October 2022

This video is from a session at the European Sustainable Energy Week 2022 annual event. The session highlights the benefits of renewable energy communities (improved energy security, lower energy bills, active local participation, capacity to influence the cost and the quality of services, and boost local investments) through local examples from signatories of the Covenant of Mayors, the Community Energy Repository and the Rural Energy Communities. Participants discuss renewable energy communities in the context of the REPowerEU plan, share their challenges to setting up and managing a renewable energy community, and brainstorm possible solutions.

This is the editorial for our recently released special issue in People, Place and Policy, which contains 8 articles covering a range of different perspectives around fuel poverty. In this editorial, we not only touch on the articles in the special issue but discuss how there is a need to better bring together and understand the decarbonisation and energy poverty reduction agendas.

This paper uses data from the Ghana Living Standard Survey to analyse multidimensional energy poverty and its impact on the health, education, and cognitive skills of children in Ghana. The multidimensional energy poverty analysis reveals that nearly 59% of children in Ghana are living in multidimensional energy-poor households and the paper explores possible opportunities to address this issue.

This paper presents analysis of the impacts of renewable energy support levies on income inequality and energy poverty in Germany. The results indicate that indiscriminate renewable energy support levies on electricity consumption do increase income inequality and energy poverty. Based on the findings, the authors propose and evaluate different levy options finding they would lead to lower income inequality and substantially decreased energy poverty.

This paper explores what recent changes to global energy markets (supply and affordability) mean in relation to the escalating prevalence of fuel poverty and implications on and for homelessness and housing exclusion at a European and UK level.