Energy poverty, apart from one of the last words admitted by the RAE, is a growing problem in Spain. Almost one in five Spanish homes, or more than 17%, cannot maintain an adequate temperature because they do not have the financial means to do so. The percentage is equivalent to more than 8 million people and represents a strong increase compared to previous records.
These figures are part of the latest edition of the reference report on energy poverty in Spain, presented this Monday in Madrid. It is the one carried out every year by the Energy and Poverty Chair of the Universidad Pontificia Comillas, whose sponsors include energy companies such as Naturgy, Endesa and EDP.
The data in the report corresponds to 2022, when the invasion of Ukraine and the increase in energy prices aggravated the difficulties of many homes in heating. According to their conclusions, the percentage of homes that cannot have an adequate temperature went from 14.3% in 2021 to 17.1% a year later. If before there were 6.7 million people in this situation, now there are more than 8 million, 20% more.
This indicator, says Efraim Centeno, the director of the study, is “the most worrying.” “Households, even having increased their energy spending, continued and expanded their dynamic of energy austerity in 2022 at the expense of maintaining an inadequate temperature,” he says. In other words, the increase in economic effort did not serve to increase comfort, but rather was used to address the rise in bills.
The number of people in this situation is also almost 3 million higher than in 2020, the year of the pandemic. There is a “growing tendency in many families to restrict heating for fear of the bill,” which is “exacerbated” by price increases, indicates José Carlos Romero, coordinator of the study.
Severe energy poverty already affects almost 5 million people, and it does so while energy spending increases by 20%, well above income. In 16.8% of households, the percentage of economic effort dedicated to energy in relation to their net income is more than double that of the average Spanish household. It is another indicator of energy poverty.
Furthermore, households that spend less than half the national median on energy, which is also another indication of energy poverty, have gone from 10.1% to 11.8%, again the maximum recorded to date.
The only variable that behaved better than in the previous year was payment delays, which went from affecting 9.5% of households in 2021 to 9.2% a year later. The authors attribute the decrease to the measures implemented to protect the most vulnerable households from power outages, which, despite having incurred debt, did not see their access to electrical resources cut off.
This report is based on information sources such as the Family Budget (EPF) and Living Conditions (ECV) surveys published by the INE.
The authors assure that the data would have been much worse if measures had not been implemented to protect vulnerable consumers and alleviate the cost of the energy bill for the entire population.
“The shields put in place worked to a certain extent and mitigated the blow,” they say. They also describe energy poverty in Spain as “high” and defend measures such as improving household efficiency. “It is impossible to heat housing in a situation of very low efficiency,” they warn.
The authors also give a definition for energy poverty that is somewhat different and more technical than that offered by the RAE. For them, it consists of “a situation in which a household finds itself unable to satisfy its basic energy supply needs as a result of an insufficient level of income that may be aggravated by having inefficient housing.” “Energy prices are added to this in 2022,” they add.
