A new term is flaoting around national and international news circles: Energy Poverty, or the acute lack of energy in the form of heating, cooling or electric power. Said the German SPD Party in a recent comment regarding rising energy prices in Germany:

“We are taking serious the concerns of German citizens regarding the growing energy prices. (…) We seek to impede the energy poverty that is threatening numerous households…” With all due respect to the worries that the energy price spikes are causing here in Central Europe – isn’t there a better term for a situation that, compared to other countries, is still one of “energy abundance”?

We don’t need to look far in order to meet people to whom “energy poverty” is a real and existential threat: as the International Energy Agency pointed out in a new publication entitled “Energy Reform and Reconstruction in the Western Balkans,” an estimated one in six people in the region are exposed to energy poverty, with insufficient energy services to ensure a healthy lifestyle for themselves and their families. The regions discussed in the report include parts of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo.

If we look beyond European borders, there is a total of 1.6 billion people who still have no access to electricity.

One initiative to battle energy poverty is the EPA or Energy Poverty Action. EPA is an initiative that was founded by three global energy companies, British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority (Canada), Eskom (South Africa) and Vattenfall (Sweden). The goal of the initiative is to deliver business expertise and best practices to reduce energy poverty by developing innovative, scaleable and replicable energy projects. It was initiated at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2005 and is currently developing two projects, in Lesotho and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For more details, an interview with Christoph Frei, Head of Energy Industries & PACI, can be downloaded on EPA’s website.

- Birte Pampel

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