This is project is funded by FPRN as part of the EPEC programme for early career 2020-21 round.
The project Children’s fight against energy poverty aims to get to know the lived experience of the children in Cañada Real and to identify and denounce the impacts of energy poverty in their lives but also to outline the advocacy process they have conducted and how they have taken part into the fight for energy justice. The project will be held with the support of local organisations and will contribute to raise public and policy awareness about the impacts of energy poverty on children’s lives and about the importance of giving them a voice in activism, advocacy and research.
‘This grant will enable me to look into one of the most terrible cases of energy exclusion and also to collaborate to raise children’s voices to claim for their energy rights.’
‘[The] EPEC grant has certainly been a great help in the development of my PhD. On the one hand, it has allowed me to secure my research; on the other hand, it has allowed me to place special emphasis on the situation of the Cañada Real, which at first was not possible to include. La Cañada Real is a neighbourhood located on the outskirts of Madrid, where approximately 2,500 people live, including 1,120 minors, who have been without access to the electricity grid since October 2020 (at the height of the pandemic). Through stakeholder interviews and group workshops with children, the research is revealing the impacts of energy exclusion on children. In the particular case of La Cañada, and the struggle for more than a year to regain access to electricity, the neighbourhood has made children and their rights central to public and advocacy campaigns. The project also aims to understand what factors have placed children in this central position and what impact this has on them and the process they live through. The project also includes an analysis of how the media focus has positioned children: in a situation of vulnerability or as agents of rights.’
Outputs

Irene González Pijuan 2022
Digital Booklet
A brilliant and colourful book produced in collaboration with Alliance against Energy Poverty @APE_Cat and Engineers without Borders in Barcelona @ESFCatalunya. Supported by our Energy Poverty in Early Career (EPEC) programme.

Irene Gonzalez Pijuan 2022
Report Summary
Irene summarises her FPRN funded project, including key findings and recommendations.