Energy services and vulnerability:Building a global framework to conceptualize and

address domestic energy deprivation

Professor Stefan BouzarovskiCentre for Urban Energy and Resilience, University of Manchester

Starting points• Growing conceptual and terminological

interest in the terms energy and fuel poverty

• Overcoming the affordability-access binary

• Need for moving beyond incomes, prices and infrastructure investment in the understanding of fuel or energy poverty (Bouzarovski 2013)

• Positioning energy deprivation as an issue of human security and a planetary scale problem (Sovacool 2011)

Arguments

• 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

• The relationship between needs and services is shaped by multiple socio-technical pathways and factors

• The driving forces of domestic energy deprivation can be seen via a vulnerability approach that emphasizes issues of resilience and risk

‘Fuel poverty comes of age’

• A widely recognized societal challenge among key academic, practitioner and policy-making circles

• Underlying causes commonly reduced to low incomes, high energy prices and poor energy efficiency

• Existing frameworks increasingly applied to study issues outside the UK and Ireland

‘Energy poverty’ in the developing world

• Largely a question of ‘access to modern energy’ (Pachauri and Spreng 2004; Sagar 2005)

• Extensive impacts on well-being and health: estimated 1.5 million killed every year by fumes and smoke from open cooking fires (World Bank 2014)

• ‘Fuel poverty mostly occurs in relatively wealthy countries with cold climates’ … whereas ‘energy poverty occurs across all climates but mostly in poor countries’ (Li et al 2014: 480).

New approaches

• Binary division between fuel/energy poverty complicated by situations where access and affordability are intertwined e.g. in China, South America or European periphery

• Linear logic of energy ladder and energy stacking increasingly challenged (Hiemstra-van der Horst and Hovorka 2008)

• Increasing focus on dynamics of recognition and procedure in the rise of fuel poverty (Walker and Day 2012; Braubach and Ferrand 2013; Hall et al. 2013)

Energy services and needs (1)

• ‘Benefits that energy carriers produce for human well being’ (Modi et al. 2005)

• People do not demand kWhs but a warm and well-lit home (Haas et al 2008)

• Conventional metrics do not capture the satisfaction received by the final user (Petrova et al 2013)

Energy services and needs (2)

• A single energy carrier can offer multiple energy services

• One type of energy service may be provided by different carriers, and even non-energy services

• Services represent hybrid assemblages of social and technical networks across multiple scales

• Services satisfy needs, which are at the core of human functionings

Implications• Biological energy needs are universal, but

social needs are relative: ‘basic needs’ approaches are problematic

• When measuring energy deprivation we should ultimately be interested in the relationship between needs and services

• Energy service deprivation can be seen in global terms, although the pathways through which it occurs may be context-dependent

• Poverty thinking in itself is insufficient: vulnerability frameworks offer a more robust perspective on the drivers of deprivation

Primary renewables

Mechanical power

Solid fuels, derivatives

Liquid fuels, derivatives

Natural gas, derivatives

Electricpower

Secondary heat

Space heating

Water heating

Space cooling

Refrigeration

Cooking

Drying

Lighting

Appliances

IT

Energy chain

Conversion to ‘useful’

energy

AccessAffordability

NeedsPractices

EfficiencyFlexibilityCarriers Services

Indirect energy services

Household demand

Household demand

Primary renewables

Mechanical power

Solid fuels, derivatives

Liquid fuels, derivatives

Natural gas, derivatives

Electricpower

Secondary heat

Space heating

Water heating

Space cooling

Refrigeration

Cooking

Drying

Lighting

Appliances

IT

System of provision

Conversion to ‘useful’

energy

Carriers Services

Indirect energy services

AccessAffordability

NeedsPractices

EfficiencyFlexibility

Factor Components Stressors

Access Poor availability of energy carriers appropriate to meet household

needs

External

Affordability High ratio between cost of fuels and household incomes, including

role of tax systems or assistance schemes

External/

internal

Flexibility Inability to move to a form of energy service provision that is

appropriate to household needs

Internal

Energy

efficiency

Disproportionately high loss of useful energy during energy

conversions in the home

Internal

Needs Mismatch between household energy requirements and available

energy services; for social, cultural, economic or health reasons

Internal

Practices A household may lack knowledge about support programmes or

ways of using energy effectively in the home

Internal/

external

Concluding thoughts

• Domestic energy deprivation hinges upon the ‘appliances, infrastructures, social norms and human action’ (Bates et al., 2012) within which the residential environment of the home is ‘bound and reproduced’

• Energy service poverty is not static and does not necessarily affect demographically distinct groups

• It is embedded in urban and regional landscapes and forms of political participation – which means policy responses need to address these spheres rather than just affordability, access and energy efficiency

• Energy service poverty can be seen as a global issue … We need a planetary approach to address the problem

THANK YOUurban-energy.org

@stefanbuzar @stiradoherrero@curemanchester

#energyvulnerability