Germany can do more to combat energy poverty
© fstopimages/Malte Müller
Between 2.7 and 6.5 million households in Germany are affected by energy poverty – they cannot keep their homes adequately warm, for instance, or spend an excessively high proportion of their income on electricity and heating. At the same time, the data available in Germany lacks the quality needed to measure energy poverty and transport poverty suitably. Yet this would be the basis for taking measures tailored closely to reducing these specific forms of poverty.
In the latest episode of the Oeko-Institut’s Wenden bitte! podcast, Dr Viktoria Noka, Mandy Schossig and Hannah Oldenburg talk about definitions, indicators and actions to combat energy and transport poverty. Viktoria Noka stresses that in the field of transport poverty, in particular, agreement has yet to be found on the point from which onwards people are considered transport-poor. The factors feeding into this determination are diverse. They include the availability of public transport as such, how quickly one can use it to reach important places such one’s place of work, medical facilities or shopping facilities, and whether people can afford their mobility in principle.
There’s a major need for further research here in order to know precisely how many people are affected by energy and transport poverty. Not only the available income plays a role in assessments, but also other dimensions such as the level of prices for energy and transport services, and the options available to save energy.
The podcast audio is in German; an English translation is here.
EU Social Climate Plans to finance assistance
Noka also notes in the podcast that the revenue from the new European Union emissions trading system for the transport and buildings sectors and from the existing emissions trading system for industry and the energy sector will partly be used to replenish the EU’s Social Climate Fund. Disbursements from this fund shall then finance assistance payments to households affected by energy and transport poverty. To this end, each EU member state must submit by June 2025 a Social Climate Plan stating how many people in the respective country are classified as poor and precisely which measures shall be deployed to assist them.
“According to the European Commission a large part of these funds shall not be paid out directly to citizens, but shall instead fund infrastructural measures that reduce costs over the long term. Moreover, the funds shall go in a targeted manner to poor people and not be spent in a broad-scale, trickle-down approach,” Noka explains.
She points to successful programmes in other EU states, such as grant programmes for housing refurbishment in Ireland that poor building owners can avail themselves of, or social leasing programmes in France in which state subsidies are deployed to place people with a low income in a position to lease low-carbon means of transport.
Knowledge rather than everyday advice
The Oeko-Institut's “Wenden bitte!” (“All change please!”) podcast is aimed at listeners from politics, science, the media, NGOs and the general public – anyone with an interest in political and environmental issues. Co-presenters of the podcast are Nadine Kreutzer, journalist and presenter, and Mandy Schossig, Head of Public Relations & Communications at the Oeko-Institut. For about an hour – enough time for the “long haul of environmental podcasts” – they talk with one of the Oeko-Institut’s experts about upcoming transformations towards sustainability. Special episodes address current affairs in politics and society.
The “Wenden bitte!” (“All change please!”) podcast: Episodes of Season 4
Episode 4: “Can we still afford energy and mobility?” with Dr Viktoria Noka, released 20 June 2024
Episode 3: “What does public participation deliver?” with Dr Melanie Mbah, released 16 May 2024
Episode 2: "Faster progress on the energy transition?" with Moritz Vogel, released 14 March 2024
All seasons and episodes are at www.oeko.de/podcast
The podcast is available on all the usual podcast portals – such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify
