
Energy is a vital element for human welfare and quality of life and a main driver of societal progress and development. Access to sufficient energy is a fundamental human right that should be guaranteed to everyone. However, hundreds of millions of people live in energy poverty across the globe without access to adequate energy services for a decent standard of living. In Europe, the populations in periphery countries like Portugal are the most affected, as inefficient homes, high energy prices and low wages result in energy deprivation for many families, further exacerbated by the energy crisis. As funding is increasingly deployed at the EU level to tackle energy poverty, a large part is mobilised to untargeted measures and short-term consumption subsidies that do not address the structural causes. One of the potential reasons for this limited policy impact is the lack of appropriate energy poverty diagnosis and measure impact analysis at the different scales to inform and shape policy design.
Drawing on international knowledge and focusing on Portugal as the case study, this thesis sets out to further explore energy poverty diagnosis and mitigation action across different spatial scales, producing learnings for future problem definition, measurement, and policy design, targeting, and monitoring. The approach aims to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge on energy poverty measurement, mitigation measures impact assessment, and national policy formulation dedicated to eradicating this issue. For this purpose, it conducts narrative and structured literature reviews of energy poverty measurement approaches, indicators, and data on national and subnational scales. Building on this knowledge and previous work developed in the country, it develops a local-scale building energy performance assessment to further explore high-resolution energy poverty analysis for a historic neighbourhood. It explores ex-ante regionally disaggregated impact assessments of building energy renovation and energy equipment replacement on the energy performance and energy poverty levels for the whole country. The economic dimension is also examined to assess necessary long-term investments. Finally, drawing on the knowledge produced in the previous assessments, it develops a critical analysis of the diagnosis and monitoring framework of the recent national policy strategy on energy poverty mitigation in Portugal, which guides the planned future action.
This research highlights the best practices, shortcomings, and gaps in current energy poverty indicators and discusses underexplored aspects that can lead to the improvement of energy poverty diagnosis at national and subnational levels. It takes the first steps into local-level assessment in Portugal within the broader context of energy transition and energy use decarbonisation, pointing out priority areas for building energy efficiency intervention in a historic neighborhood. The whole-country energy efficiency measure rollout analysis provides regionally-disaggregated results on the most cost-effective measures, the regions and dwelling types with the highest energy needs reduction potential, and the necessary investments to conduct a deep transformation of the domestic sector, considering energy justice issues across the territory. It also draws a direct link between energy efficiency measures and energy poverty reduction, estimating the impact of measures on energy poverty vulnerability reduction. It finally provides direct inputs towards the improvement of energy poverty definition and measurement in the current national policy. These results can support national and local policymakers and practitioners in the country and across Europe in their energy poverty reduction efforts while contributing to the theory and scientific literature on this topic. The outcomes of this study can support a paradigm shift towards more nuanced, science-based, effective policy action and a faster and wider energy poverty eradication, granted that there is the necessary political commitment to drive this transformation.