An estimation of fuel poverty for housing

The concept of fuel poverty addresses both housing renovation and income poverty. Indeed, fuel-vulnerable households either live in low-energy-efficient housing (considering local climatic conditions) and/or have low incomes.

Fuel poverty does not equate to precarity, as monitored by the Observatoire National de la Précarité Énergétique (ONPE). The former reflects a potential difficulty in meeting energy costs for housing, while precarity refers to a more actual difficulty. In this sense, fuel poverty can be defined as exposure to the risk of precarity. Not all energy-vulnerable households are precarious, but all precarious ones are vulnerable.

This notion of fuel poverty can guide public renovation policies, ensuring they focus not only on environmental topics but also on the actual challenges faced by the inhabitants. This may, for example, lead to targeting renovation subsidies on the housing occupied by these households, or on the areas where they are concentrated. As such, vulnerable households can be a core focus for implementing an ecological transition that also addresses social inequalities.

The methodology presented here is the one favored by INSEE to assess fuel poverty. It identifies households that would need to devote an excessive share of their disposable income to ensure standard energetic comfort in their homes. Energy expenditure is estimated based on the “conventional consumption” of energy in a home, as provided by energy performance certificates, and on energy prices. Household disposable income is obtained from the fichier démographique des logements et des individus (Fideli).