New paper: fuel poverty and energy efficiency obligations – a critical view

Jan Rosenow, a Senior Consultant in Energy and Climate Policy at Ricardo-AEA, a global consulting firm, has teamed up with Reg Platt (Institute for Public Policy Research) and Brooke Flanagan (Future Climate) and produced a paper critically examining the tensions created by using energy efficiency obligations for fuel poverty alleviation. While the energy efficiency obligations were originally intended as carbon reduction and not fuel poverty policies, due to recognition of the potential for regressive outcomes they often include provisions for vulnerable and low-income customers. Intuitively, reducing carbon emissions and alleviating fuel poverty seem to be two sides of the same coin. However, the paper sets out considerable tensions between the two when addressed through energy efficiency obligations, particularly arising from the potentially regressive impacts of rising energy prices resulting from such obligations, but also the complexity of targeting fuel poor households and the implications for deliverability. Based on this analysis, alternative approaches to targeting fuel poverty within future supplier obligations are proposed.

The paper can be found here.

2 thoughts on “New paper: fuel poverty and energy efficiency obligations – a critical view

Leave a reply to Rod Janssen Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.