Making the Most of Qualitative Evidence for Energy Poverty Mitigation:A Research Agenda and Call for Action

Abstract

The field of energy poverty brings together a wide range of researchers, from numerous disciplines and using a range of methods. Qualitative research on energy poverty, especially on the lived experience of energy poor households, has burgeoned in recent years. Contributions stem from researchers based in a range of disciplines and nations, and studying varied contexts and spatial patterns of energy poverty (Bouzarovski and Tirado Herrero 2017; Aklin et al. 2018). This growing interest in qualitative evidence on energy poverty has given new insights into the complex, multi-dimensional and dynamic nature of this problem. It has helped contextualise existing quantitative data, by showing how policy plays out in peoples’ lives, and revealing what is working or not in these households’ everyday basis.The strengths of qualitative research are numerous, but principally, it allow us to grasp the systemic nature of this problem and engage in people centred research. As qualitative researchers we use terms like multi-dimensional, multi-scalar, dynamic and relational to describe the phenomenon of energy poverty. Moreover, while quantitative understandings represent people as numbers, percentages or proportions, qualitative work studies the daily lives of people. In short, qualitative research centres energy-poor and practitioner experiences as the main focus of analysis. As a result, it can play an emancipatory role in representing the interests of people experiencing specific problems. Hidden dimensions of energy poverty that are washed away in quantitative data aggregates can be revealed through qualitative research. This contributes to more appropriate and tailored policy interventions that better reflect the needs of energy poor households.This policy brief offers a research agenda and call for action to ‘make the most’ of qualitative evidence relating to energy poverty, based on discussions from an ENGAGER workshop in Amsterdam (30-31 October 2019) involving 50 researchers, policy-makers and practitioners from across the Netherlands and the ENGAGER network