New datasets promise fresh insights on fuel poverty
Comment by Anna Strzelecka, Modelling & Simulation Engineer Energy Systems Catapult
Understanding fuel poverty is the first step to tackling it. This is why Energy Systems Catapult has launched a new project called Understanding energy demand in areas of economic vulnerability.
This is a new collaboration between the Smart Energy Data Service (SENSE) and the Financial Data Service (FINDS) team, funded by Smart Data Research (SDR UK). It’s a perfect partnership. FINDS has access to anonymised financial data from more than five million customers while SENSE provides researchers with energy use datasets to help accelerate the UK’s transition to Net Zero.
Dougie Robb, CEO of Smart Data Foundry and Director of FINDS, says: "Making anonymised private sector data more accessible and combining it with other rich data sources, such as smart meter data, provides enormous opportunities to better understand and tackle fuel poverty.
“By comparing financial indicators from current account data with energy usage data, issues such as poverty premiums associated with energy costs and the financial pressures leading to fuel poverty can be studied and understood in a more granular way."
Dr Richard Snape, technical lead of the project, says: “Bringing data from the smart meter system together with financial data and aggregate consumption in a local area is a powerful way to get a handle on how fuel poverty affects people’s lives. We will create a new dataset to enhance the study of fuel poverty and bring real social value from the data collected.”
Why fuel poverty?
The definitions of fuel poverty in England and Wales leave room for improvement.
Torran Sample, collaborating researcher from Oxford University, says: “Existing definitions, like the Low Income High Costs (LIHC) and Low Income Low Energy Efficiency (LILEE) indicators, are known to significantly underestimate the true rate of fuel poverty. This inaccuracy poses a critical policy challenge: if fuel poverty is not measured accurately, it cannot be meaningfully alleviated or eradicated.”
In the midst of winter, conversations about high energy bills and the cost of living crisis are commonplace. As the Net Zero transition continues, we mustn’t forget there are vulnerable people who are struggling to heat their homes let alone find the money to afford energy efficient solutions.
Too often, energy system innovation focuses on new tech or big infrastructure, forgetting the lived realities of those struggling the most. That’s why the collaboration with FINDS is so crucial.
Previous Catapult work has found that fuel poverty will change over time as the energy transition changes why people can or cannot afford adequate energy services. Emerging vulnerabilities are important as it will change how fuel poverty is experienced and needs to be measured. More on this Catapult work can be found here and through our Fair Futures programme.
Our approach
We want to combine energy consumption data and Smart DCC (Data Communications Company) system data with financial records. We hope to create new datasets that can show real indicators of fuel poverty at a Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOA) level.
We want these datasets to provide a springboard for researchers to answer more questions about fuel poverty in the UK. This will contribute to a more inclusive transition towards Net Zero.
For more information about this project please contact us at sense@es.catapult.org.uk.