Back "Energy poverty kills." Report of the April 2022 Policy Dialogues session

"Energy poverty kills." Report of the April 2022 Policy Dialogues session

Last Thursday, April 21, the second Policy Dialogues session took place, organized by the JHU-UPF Public Policy Center (UPF-BSM), entitled: "Spain's growing energy poverty: are there alternatives?" in which Maria Campuzano and Sergio Tirado, experts in energy poverty, presented the panorama of this crisis and some socio-political alternatives.

02.05.2022

 

Energy poverty is a phenomenon that has received little attention for years, and the people who suffer from it are usually only visible when tragedy strikes. In 2016, an 81-year-old woman in Reus, Tarragona, died due to a fire in her home caused by a candle, two months after her electricity was cut off. The fact is that "energy poverty kills," said Maria Campuzano, spokesperson for the Alliance Against Energy Poverty (APE). However, besides tragedies of this magnitude, millions more people in Spain are affected by cuts to their electricity and other essential supplies. The reality of this situation and its impacts are still little-understood.

For Sergio Tirado, 'Ramón y Cajal' researcher at the Department of Geography of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and the EmpowerMed project, it is not only a question of not having enough energy at home but, in many cases, of having to make difficult decisions, such as deciding between paying the house bills or meeting other basic needs such as food. In addition to negatively affecting physical health, this systematically impacts mental health. 

Tirado explained that energy poverty is caused by different factors resulting from structural inequality: low incomes, high energy prices, and low energy efficiency of housing and domestic appliances. In recent years, research in this field has been broadened to include the lack of government support, the diversity of household needs, and gender inequalities: "households headed by women are systematically more affected by energy poverty."

Part of Tirado's presentation explored the question, "to what extent do indicators help to measure the impact of the crisis?" Even though, since 2019, there have been indicators of energy poverty in Spain, their results generate biased and incomplete views of the phenomenon. "It is best to talk to people who go through this situation, because maybe they do experience cold at home, but there are other experiences that escape this vision of energy poverty," Tirado said. 

To conclude, Tirado presented some alternatives to consider for tackling this crisis. First, some recent studies emphasize the use of the concept of dignity to talk about the emotional dimensions of energy poverty. Second, although the government has created emergency solutions in the current context, structural approaches are not addressed. Finally, to speak from an energy justice perspective, factors of distribution (energy inequality and ability to pay), recognition (the way vulnerable groups are treated) and procedures and participation (inequality in decision making) have to be considered.

 

Collective empowerment: "what we are demanding is universal access to basic services," Alliance against Energy Poverty (APE). 

The Alliance against Energy Poverty is a social movement that emerged in 2014 in Catalonia, Spain, in a context of economic crisis, as a response to countless cuts in essential supplies, with more than 1.4 million families affected by electricity cuts and more than 72,000 water cuts. 

Since then, this movement has sought to support affected families to demand universal access to essential services, put pressure on administrations, demand accountability from large companies, and advise, through collective empowerment, so that affected families can cope with energy poverty. For María Campuzano, "it is from this space of collective advice that we detect whether public policies work or do not work and that is how we make [policy] proposals, because they are proposals that are made with people who are going through this situation."

Until the APE’s creation, public policies to combat energy poverty were based on temporary solutions without addressing the underlying problem. In 2015, the APE promoted the Law 24/2015 through a Popular Legislative Initiative, intending to plan a paradigm shift. "At that time, Spanish law assumed that if you didn't pay your bill, it was because you didn't want to. We tried to change that approach and say, let's see, if we are talking about basic supplies, something that people need to live, why don't we assume that if people don't pay, it's because they can't, and we pass the responsibility on to the companies?" commented Campuzano. Thanks to this law and under the precautionary principle, companies must make sure they know the actual situation of people who do not pay their energy bills before cutting off their supplies.

Although public policies have advanced at the national and municipal levels, there is still a long way to go. "All these are measures to stop the shock, we prevent people from being left with no energy supply, but the root problem is a structural problem: who is managing these basic services? We have created a model in which if you do not have sufficient economic resources, you are not guaranteed access to these basic rights. That is what has to be changed at the core,” stated Campuzano.

 

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