Assessing Energy Poverty in Urban Regions of Mexico: The Role of Thermal Comfort and Bioclimatic Context

The increase of energy access to households has been a global priority. By 2018, 89.59% of the world population had access to electricity, while 97.26% of the persons living in urban areas (The Mexican Government reports it at 99.99%) had access. We must now move beyond access to electricity and add...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2021-10, Vol.13 (19), p.10646
Main Authors: Cedano, Karla G., Robles-Bonilla, Tiare, Santillán, Oscar S., Martínez, Manuel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bioclimatology
Biometeorology
Cooking
Deprivation
Electricity
Energy consumption
Energy poverty
Energy requirements
Energy utilization
Household appliances
Households
Poverty
Public policy
Residential energy
Standard deviation
Sustainability
Sustainable development
Urban areas
Variables
World population
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The increase of energy access to households has been a global priority. By 2018, 89.59% of the world population had access to electricity, while 97.26% of the persons living in urban areas (The Mexican Government reports it at 99.99%) had access. We must now move beyond access to electricity and address energy poverty in urban spaces. A household is energy poor when their inhabitants are incapable of securing proper domestic energy services. Several different methodologies were developed to measure energy poverty. The Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) by Nussbaumer has been successfully used in Africa and in Latin-America. The MEPI considers five dimensions: cooking, lighting, household appliances, entertainment/education and communication. We developed a Multidimensional Energy Deprivation Index (MEDI), based on MEPI. Thermal comfort has been included as sixth dimension, by considering the temperature of the region where the household is located. We found important differences between MEPI and MEDI for Mexico at the national level (urban-MEPI at 0.028 vs. 0.071 urban-MEDI, which implies a higher degree of energy poverty). Also, differences between geopolitical and bioclimatic regions were found. Having better ways to assess energy poverty in the urban context is a key factor to develop effective public policies that might alleviate it.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su131910646