Towards a new measurement of energy poverty: A cross-community analysis of rural Pakistan
Bilal Mirza & Adam Szirmai
#2010-024
Most rural households in Pakistan remain in a state of energy poverty.
They use a variety of non-conventional energy sources, including
traditional biomass (firewood, animal and plant waste), kerosene and
even LPG. A specially designed Energy Poverty Survey (EPS), carried out
in rural Pakistan from December 2008 till January 2009, showed that
rural households use different combinations of energy sources (the
energy mix). This paper analyses the characteristics and consequences of
the different energy mixes, used by richer and poorer rural households.
Using data from the EPS, we develop a composite index to measure the
degree of Energy Poverty among rural households. This index takes into
account the inconvenience for the household associated with the use of
different sources of energy, as well as its energy shortfall and takes
household size into account. In our results, we found that 23.1% of
rural households experience high degrees of energy inconveniences,
spending ample amount of their time and effort in collecting or buying
different energy sources. Next, using the standard conversion units to
convert different energy sources into kilowatt hours, we found that
96.6% rural households experience severe energy shortfalls. Our new and
inclusive measure of energy poverty which combines the energy
inconveniences and the energy shortfalls, reveals that 91.7% of all
rural households in Punjab province of Pakistan are in the state of
severe energy poverty.
Keywords: energy access; energy poverty measurement; energy indicators;
energy inconvenience index; energy poverty index
JEL Codes: I32, O13, Q01
UNU-MERIT Working Papers
ISSN 1871-9872