At least 660,000 Portuguese live in energy poverty several times
PRESS MAGAZINE. The National Long-Term Strategy to Combat Energy Poverty 2022-2050 aims to combat energy poverty in Portugal
At least 660 thousand people live in Portugal in a situation of severe energy poverty. This means that simultaneously to households “in a situation of poverty whose expenditure on energy represents +10% of the total income” and “in a situation of poverty monetary or economic poverty”, thus becoming unable to maintain their homes in thermal comfort conditions.
This is the budget of the National Long-Term Strategy for Combating Energy Poverty 2022-2050 (ENLPCPE 2022-2050), a document placed under public consultation by the Ministry of Environment and Cimatic Action and explored in this Thursday’s edition of the newspaper public.
According to the document, quoted by the newspaper, energy poverty affects between 1.8 million and three million Portuguese – mainly single-parent families and the elderly – meets the assessment monitoring, which can be the living conditions of households ( that is, whether or not they have the capacity “to keep the house warm with acceleration”) or the weight of the energy bill in their income.
The Government describes energy poverty as “a distinct form of poverty that is associated with a series of adverse consequences in relation to the health and well-being of individuals, such as controlled problems, cardiac and mental health, due to the lack of housing conditions and income”.
Within the scope of this strategy, the Government considers that it is possible to “grade energy poverty according to its severity” to “create the best responses suitably adapted to the target public” – this taking into account that around 660 to 680 thousand situations live more dramatic and “between 1.1 to 2.3 million people [vivem] in a situation of moderate energy poverty”.
Among the measures explored to solve this problem, and cited by Público, the allocation of vouchers to families conquered to improve the energy efficiency of homes, as well as the receipt of support, including “non-refundable support” to owners and tenants for interventions such as thermal insulation or the “replacement and/or adoption of energy efficient equipment and systems, promoting the electrification of consumption”.