Assessing Resilience to Energy Poverty in Europe through a Multi-Criteria Analysis Framework

Abstract

This study introduces a framework for assessing the resilience of different European countries against the problem of energy poverty. The proposed framework is established upon two major implementation pillars: capturing stakeholder knowledge and employing a multi-criteria analysis framework in order to provide valuable insights and objective results. The implicated evaluation criteria have been identified by the group of stakeholders and incorporate several socio-economic aspects of the problem beyond the energy dimension. The proposed methodology is largely dependent on the engaged stakeholders’ assessments, thus introducing nuggets of subjectivity into the whole analysis. However, it significantly differs from other energy poverty-based approaches, its novelty lying in that it directly attempts to evaluate a country according to its potential to deal with the problem as a whole, rather than deconstructing it in components and partial indicators. The proposed framework is demonstrated in countries in both Southern/Eastern and Northern/Western Europe (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain), exploiting diversities and particularities associated with their context.