ABSTRACT
It is now almost 30 years since fuel poverty was first identified formally, a product, in part, of the burden of increased fuel prices resulting from the OPEC oil crises of the 1970s. Since that time, the respective governments of Britain and Ireland have recognised fuel poverty as a hona fide social problem. However, many other European countries have yet to acknowledge the existence of fuel poverty, let alone devise and implement fuel-poverty policy. Fuel poverty is arguably the strongest adverse social impact resulting from the inefficient consumption of energy in the domestic sector, and much has been done over the last decade or so both to highlight the plight of those households living in fuel poverty, and to reduce the numbers suffering. Such effort has realised actual results in the form of reductions in the levels of households caught in a fuel-poverty trap in the UK, with 35% less households suffering in 1998 than in 1991 (DEFRA and DTI, 2001). Although declining real energy prices in the 1990s in the UK have played a positive role in this reduction in the level of fuel poverty, some of it may be associated with the Home Energy Efficiency Scheme (HEES) which has provided grants for the retrofitting of energy-saving measures in the home for those on low incomes. However, there has been no similar programme implemented in Ireland, and this study has demonstrated that levels of Irish fuel poverty remain among the highest in northern Europe, while domestic energy-efficiency standards remain poor relative to the rest of northern Europe. Southern Europe appears to have a particularly daunting task in improving the diffusion of energy-efficiency technologies in the domestic sector and curbing fuel poverty.
