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Rizikové obce pre ohrozenie energetickou chudobou na základe Indexu ohrozenia. Grafika: Martina Repíková

Energy poverty is a problem requiring urgent solutions

4. 7. 2024 | 287 visits

Energy poverty is characterised by a situation where a household cannot afford to maintain a suitable room temperature. In Slovakia, one of the few European countries, the unfavourable situation is currently getting worse. Households that do not have sufficient financial resources to maintain a suitable indoor temperature use unsuitable materials such as waste for heating, thereby causing emissions of harmful substances into the air. Scientists from the Slovak Academy of Sciences present the Energy Poverty 2024 study.

"In Slovakia, every fourth household below the poverty line cannot maintain sufficient heat in their home. In neighbouring countries, this proportion is significantly lower - in Poland and Hungary, this concerns 10% of households, in the Czech Republic 7%, and in Austria 5% of households below the poverty line have a problem with a suitable room temperature," says Dušana Dokupilová of the Institute for Forecasting of the Centre of social and psychological sciences SAS.

Energy poverty is mostly associated with a lack of financial resources to pay for energy expenses or when the household's income does not sufficiently cover its energy expenses, which means that after paying for the household's energy costs, there is an insufficient amount of funds left to cover basic life needs. Within Europe, Slovakia is among the countries with the highest share of energy expenditure to disposable income.

"An energy-vulnerable household with a tendency to energy poverty is one whose total net annual income, calculated for the number of household members, is less than the national median (EUR 8,818 for 2022 according to official data of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic). A household in energy poverty will have an average of EUR 450 left after paying expenses for food, housing, health and transport," explains the scientist.

The latest data show that Slovak households spend an average of 10.3% of their income on energy. However, if we take into account the number of household members, the share increases to 19%, which means that the household must invest a fifth of its disposable income in energy. Therefore, many households start saving, which, in many cases, is connected to heating with unsuitable energy carriers.

"It is necessary to determine appropriate measures to help energy-poor households for the situation to improve. At the same time, it is necessary to offer assistance to households that do not yet have a significant problem but would already find themselves in serious trouble if, for example, the members of the household lost their jobs. Prepaid electricity can also, in some specific cases, be a very good tool for solving energy poverty, especially in households where the reason for energy poverty is financial illiteracy," adds Dušana Dokupilová.

 

More information can be found at:

https://www.prog.sav.sk/portfolio/energeticka-chudoba-2024/