The challenge of economic and health inequalities caused by fuel poverty are rooted in the rise in fuel costs which have strong implications affecting the cost of living. Fuel costs and rising inflation due to economic and political reasons threaten individuals and families who are already struggling financially, putting them in/at risk of fuel poverty. The UK is one of the first countries to define the challenge of households living in fuel poverty prompting necessary actions, policies and interventions.
This study presents the results of an empirical investigation following direct enquires to the Greater London Authority (GLA) and all of London boroughs via Freedom of Information (FOI) requests on retrofit interventions, including an overview of financial incentives and planning assessments with an aim to increase the number of home energy upgrades since April 2021.
London adopted its own action plan in 2018 to renew its focus and alleviate more than 350,000 households in fuel poverty (GLA, 2018). The assessment and indicator for fuel poverty has changed over time, from the Low Income High Cost (LIHC) to Low Income Low Energy Efficiency (LILEE) indicator in 2021. However, identifying households in fuel poverty remains challenging and some indicators are somewhat disconnected from what is happening on the ground. The findings suggest that there is a need to establish tools and methodologies that are connected to the national and local context. Fuel poverty is affecting people’s health and well-being, particularly those already facing socio-economic and health inequalities. After the COVID pandemic, a political awareness of fuel poverty is found in the Mayoral manifesto, however the Fuel Poverty Action Plan does not have binding targets and is not regularly updated. Current Fuel Poverty Partnership Tasks are focusing on awareness and communication or the urgent support to households already affected, but not in tackling the root causes of fuel poverty in upgrading fuel poor homes.
The uptake on retrofits from 2021 is still low and far from reaching 100k homes and the net zero target in 2030 is approaching fast. The study concludes that while LILEE is decreasing other indicators are increasing with rising energy prices. The London Building Stock Model is not widely used by boroughs, and it only maps the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating which is not sufficient to identify households in fuel poverty. Most schemes such as Energy Companies Obligation (ECO) do not specifically target fuel poverty but have a wider scope of retrofit towards net zero. The Mayor of London should explore a new indicator tool by crossing data from LBSM with socio-economic data to identify fuel poor households more accurately. The indicator could potentially include geographical location, building typology (age, etc), socio-economic / demographics, leading to action plan and retrofit strategies
