The elderly and those with disabilities face greater increases in electricity bills and worse health outcomes under some time-of-use electricity rates. This suggests that vulnerable groups should be considered separately in time-of-use rate design, and future rate designs should be tested to ensure that they do not increase hardship.
Messages for Policy
Policies are needed to ensure that demand-side response does not increase hardships for vulnerable groups.
Different vulnerable groups will have different capacities to respond to rates using price signals, so demand-side measures should be carefully targeted rather than ‘one size fits all’.
Potential time-of-use rates should be tested using scientifically rigorous methods before widespread implementation, with separate evaluation of impacts on different groups.
People who are elderly, have disabilities and/or are members of minority groups will likely require particular attention in future pilots and policies.
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References
Further Reading
Middlemiss, L. & Gillard, R. Fuel poverty from the bottom-up: characterising household energy vulnerability through the lived experience of the fuel poor. Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 6, 146–154 (2015). This work details hardships faced by vulnerable groups related to energy costs.
Walker, G. & Day, R. Fuel poverty as injustice: integrating distribution, recognition and procedure in the struggle for affordable warmth. Energy Policy 49, 69–75 (2012). This work provides additional detail on variation in hardships faced by different vulnerable groups.
Anderson, W., White, V. & Finney, A. ‘You Just Have to Get By’: Coping with Low Incomes and Cold Homes (Centre of Sustainable Energy, 2010). This work describes hardship-inducing responses of low-income households facing unaffordable energy costs.
Hernández, D. Understanding ‘energy insecurity’ and why it matters to health. Soc. Sci. Med. 167, 1–10 (2016). This work describes the health impacts associated with unaffordable energy costs.
White, L. V. & Sintov, N. D. Inaccurate consumer perceptions of monetary savings in a demand-side response programme predict programme acceptance. Nat. Energy 3, 1101–1108 (2018). This work describes the inaccuracy of household assessment of energy bill savings on demand-side response rates compared to other available rates.
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White, L.V., Sintov, N.D. Varied health and financial impacts of time-of-use energy rates across sociodemographic groups raise equity concerns. Nat Energy 5, 16–17 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-019-0515-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-019-0515-y
