Justice, Welfare, and the Energy Transition: Comparative Policy Pathways Towards Addressing Domestic Energy Deprivation

Comparative Policy Pathways Towards Addressing Domestic Energy Deprivation

Abstract

The energy transition is often framed as a technological and economic challenge, but its durability ultimately depends on something more fragile: social legitimacy. As energy prices rise and decarbonisation policies reshape everyday life, domestic energy deprivation – the inability of households to attain adequate energy services in the home – has emerged as a new social risk at the intersection of social, housing, and energy policy. When households cannot afford to heat their homes or must choose between energy and other basic needs, climate policy ceases to appear as a collective project and instead becomes a source of grievance. This thesis argues that preventing such deprivation is therefore not a peripheral social concern but a central condition for sustaining public support for the energy transition.

Drawing on a sufficiency-oriented perspective on justice, it explores what a minimum social standard of domestic energy services entails and how it can be safeguarded as societies decarbonise. Yet contemporary welfare states remain poorly equipped to address this risk. These institutions were built to manage industrial-era risks tied to labour markets and demographic change, not the distributional consequences of transforming energy systems and housing infrastructures. Against this backdrop, this thesis examines how domestic energy deprivation can be identified, what structural drivers give rise to it, and which policy responses can effectively alleviate it. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, it investigates different interventions and the institutional settings in which they emerge, thereby exploring how social protection can be future-proofed to underpin a just energy transition.