A critical review of modern approaches for multidimensional energy poverty measurement

摘要

Recent efforts to measure energy poverty more comprehensively attempt to redressthe shortcomings of binary metrics that remain in common use. However,significant challenges remain both with the construction of the new measurementframeworks and their application. The paper presents an analysis of recent multidimensionalmeasurement approaches and applications to draw inferences on theimplications of applying these for the measurement of energy access and in informingpolicies aimed at improving it. The assessment suggests that despite progresshaving been made in capturing the multidimensional nature of energy poverty, thenew measures are currently too complex to operationalize at the global level andtoo prescriptive to gain acceptance in diverse national contexts. Further efforts arethus required to consolidate and simplify the new frameworks for global trackingpurposes, and to adapt and modify these to specific country contexts to informnational policy and planning. A subset of key energy poverty dimensions and uniformset of indicators need to be shortlisted for the purposes of global comparisons,while specific national tracking efforts can apply dimensions and thresholds mostsuited to accurately capture energy poverty and its drivers in a given context.