FPRN bulletin – 3rd March 2025

The following is a report from FPRN trustee William Baker of the WELLBASED 2024 Right to Energy conference on tackling ill health due to energy poverty. The blog highlights key themes that emerged and there are links through to specific presentations.

This paper deploys the concept of ‘precariousness’ to examine the combined impacts of insecure and unaffordable housing and energy conditions on Irish households. The authors find that housing tenure is a particularly strong predictor of housing-energy precarity, and that private renters, low income groups, lone parents and younger persons (<25 years) are particularly exposed to this combined effect.

This study explores longitudinal data from the Household, Income, and Labor Dynamics in Australia Survey to uncover patterns of dynamic interdependence between energy poverty and ill-health. The analysis finds that the effect of ill-health on energy poverty appears to be larger than previously thought and suggests that ill-health might be a stepping stone to energy poverty which raises a number of implications for policy and support.

This study provides empirical insights into how different groups of energy-poor citizens exercise agency through engagement behaviors and offers actionable insights for designing measures to mitigate energy poverty in complementarity with technical and economical solutions.

This paper analyses the different situations and dimensions of energy poverty experienced by the population assisted by the Spanish Red Cross in the context of the inflationary and energy crisis experienced in 2022 and its impacts on the social and personal spheres.