The demand side of energy poverty in developing countries: an exploratory study from expenditure and self-reported perspective in Rio de Janeiros

摘要

This work discuss energy poverty focusing on the importance of the energy to promote indoorthermal comfort. We argue that it is necessary a better understanding about the relationbetween welfare and energy consumption in developing countries. Currently, the literatureand the policies in these regions have focused on challenges to connect isolated consumer inthe network. This work focus in another complementary problem, the householders connectedin the network who are not able to pay for the energy needed to access basic services. In thedeveloped and cold countries, one of the key services defined as basic are the thermalcomfort, because of the health implications. We use this approach to discuss energy poverty inthe Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro, a region where unhealthy high temperatures isfrequent. Using methodologies applied in developed and cold countries to define energypoverty in hot region in a developing country, we show that the energy poverty should have abroader definition and an important part of the problem has been overlooked. This gap hascaused a new set of complications with economic and social dimensions, such as householdersstealing energy or having their power cut. We show using two different kind of methodologies,based on the energy spent/income and based on self-reported perspective that energypoverty in Rio de Janeiro achieves an important part of the population. By a descriptiveanalysis, we have an insight about energy poverty in this region: 24% of the interviewed spent10% or more of the income with energy cost, and 69% experienced for at least one situation ofthermal comfort among the analyzed ones.