Editorial: PPP special issue – International Perspectives on Fuel Poverty

Abstract

Despite the commitments of successive UK governments to end fuel poverty by 2016, over ten per cent of UK households were deemed to be in fuel poverty in 2015 (DECC, 2015). Although comparisons over time have been rendered virtually impossible by changes to the way fuel poverty is defined and measured, it is clear that the target of fuel poverty eradication remains elusive., The winter of 2014/15 saw excess winter deaths reach their highest winter levels since 1999/00 (ONS, 2016). Evidence suggests that around a fifth of these 43,500 deaths are attributable to cold homes (Marmot Review Team, 2011) and are entirely preventable. However, excess winter deaths are only part of the picture and fuel poverty is a longstanding and pervasive health issue contributing to wider social and health inequalities. We remain far from a solution to this great social injustice which disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in society. Academic interest in the fuel poverty debate has proved as tenacious as the problem itself and our understanding of the nature, extent and consequences of fuel poverty grows increasingly detailed and nuanced, informing the work of policy makers and a growing body of charities, lobbyists and pressure groups seeking to hold government to account. The community of those seeking to better understand and develop solutions to fuel poverty is now truly multidisciplinary in nature, straddling sociology; medicine and public health; engineering; geography; architecture and planning; engineering; urban studies; economics and business. It is also, as this special issue seeks to underline, an increasingly international community. Fuel poverty as a concept can be traced back to the UK in the early 1980s, when it was first recognised that lower income consumers needed to spend a larger percentage of their income on keeping warm (Lewis, 1982; Lloyd, 2006). Wider political and public attention was heralded by the 1991 publication of Brenda Boardman's Fuel Poverty: From Cold Homes to Affordable Warmth (Boardman, 1991). Boardman's work specifically defined fuel poverty, and some ten years later, informed much of the development of the UK's 2001 Fuel Poverty Strategy. Since then there has been a gradual realisation that fuel poverty is not unique to the UK nor is it confined to cool, damp climates such as the UK, Ireland and New Zealand that require heating for many months of the year. Indeed, Australia was amongst the first countries to fund investigations into fuel poverty in the 1980s prompted by market deregulation and associated questions of social equity (Energy Action Group, 2002), reminding us that