Measuring fuel poverty in Italy: application of different fuel-poverty criteria to a national household segmentation

Fuel poverty is a multidisciplinary topic, coupling the demand-side to the supply-side, and the “household-scale” to the “country-scale”. In this complex framework, this paper contributes to the present-day discussion regarding suitable indicators to quantify fuel poverty, focusing on the Italian case study. In particular, we have compared different indicators taken from the literature and we have further developed a novel indicator based on the “minimum thermal comfort” constrain. The different indicators have been applied to the “household Budget Survey” nationally representative survey and the results have been presented, on an aggregated point of view, by using the segmentation of the Italian households previously proposed by the authors. Thus, the proposed assessment of the fuel poverty couples the “household-scale” to the “country-scale”, in the process of identifying vulnerable households: for this reason, this paper is able to scale-up the “household-scale” to consider the whole “country-scale”. In summary, this work contributes to the broader framework of “the human dimensions of energy use”. The obtained results are of practical importance and provide a rational basis for policy makers when planning strategies to tackle the incidence of fuel poverty in Italy.