The Evolution of Energy Poverty Theory: A Scientometrics Approach
The theoretical peculiarities of energy poverty research: a systematic literature review.
«Energy poverty describes a condition of energy-related social deprivation of households, usually associated to inadequate access to energy services, to dissatisfaction of basic energy needs, or to excessive payment for energy. Despite the research has grown significantly and substantial progress has been made, there is still theoretical divergence, and many decision-makers continue having an antiquated definition of the phenomenon, far away from recent advances. To aid advancing the field towards theoretical consensus and pushing recent research achievements into policy-making, the present paper maps the evolution of energy poverty theory through a scientometrics approach applied to 1025 records of the specialized literature in the period 1978-2020. This approach accounts for and synthesizes the information flows among and within the theoretical and authoring spaces of the field, which allows disclosing major themes and trends. The field shows two independent start points: energy poverty with focus on access and basic needs, and fuel poverty (targeting developing and European countries, respectively). The two conceptions remained mostly separated until 2010. Afterwards, their relationships became closer, hence they started influencing each other. More recently, energy justice has gained relevance in the field, leading to broader insights and serving as a conciliatory perspective. Furthermore, there are several central author clusters, which have dominated over the field, mainly focused on European thought, even though with a broader perspective. The evolution of energy poverty theory shows a convergent trend towards a consensual concept. Yet, the field is far from reaching consensus as many works that explore new paths of theoretical and methodological development are added every year . If the field wants to become more globally pertinent, authors should increase collaboration outside their main clusters, and underrepresented countries should increase their participation. The history of the field has been very exciting so far and it will become even more so.»
Guevara, Z., Espinosa, M., and López-Corona, O., 2022. The Evolution of Energy Poverty Theory: A Scientometrics Approach. SocArXiv. February 16
«Energy poverty represents a substantial burden on development strategies in the developed and developing world alike, accounts for several hundred thousands excess deaths per year worldwide, and is deeply interconnected to other problems in climate justice and social development. Despite its global relevance and the fact that there has been increased attention to it by governments, academia, and international institutions in the last two decades, the field lacks a clear theoretical foundation, represented mainly by the absence of consistent and agreed-upon conceptual and measurement approaches. This research presents an extensive systematic literature review of energy poverty and related terms since the 1970s and up to the year 2020, focusing on theoretical and methodological contributions. The objective is to synthesize the most influential doctrines, trends, and insights about the phenomenon. The results show that conceptual diversity goes beyond the widely recognized dichotomy between the Global North and Global South, despite several attempts to move towards a composed theoretical framework. Moreover, they also show that measurement, rather than theoretical development, has been the field’s primary focus, leading to many composite and single metrics. Due to the latter, the conceptual development has followed measurement advances instead of epistemological, semantic, or philosophical discussions, though this has started changing in recent years. Finally, considering energy poverty as a broader phenomenon has fueled a more profound debate on justice, which offers a more comprehensive understanding of the actual and expected position of energy poverty in society and development.»
Guevara, Z., Mendoza-Tinoco, D., Silva, D. 2022. The theoretical peculiarities of energy poverty research: a systematic literature review. SocArXiv. December 10.
Energy Vulnerability Theoretical Database 