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Economic Analysis of Sustainable Energy Transitions: Energy Poverty, Inequality, and a Just Transition

A Special Issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073) belonging to the section "C: Energy Economics and Policy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2027 | Viewed by 1455

Editors

Prof. Dr. George E. Halkos

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Economics, University of Thessaly, 38333 Volos, Greece
Interests: applied statistics and econometrics; environmental valuation; natural resource and environmental economics; economic modelling; applied microeconomics; air pollution; game theory; mathematical models
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Panagiotis-Stavros Aslanidis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Laboratory of Operations Research, Department of Economics, University of Thessaly, 28 Octobriou 78, Volos, Greece
Interests: environmental economics; energy economics; circular economy; energy poverty; renewable energy; sustainable development

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable energy transitions are reshaping energy systems worldwide, with profound implications for economic performance, individuals’ welfare, and climate outcomes during an era of multi-crisis. Given that current environmental policies and clean-energy investments aim to reduce emissions and improve environmental quality, their costs and benefits are not distributed evenly. More specifically, price shocks, infrastructure gaps, labor-market restructuring, and uneven access to clean technologies can amplify pre-existing vulnerabilities, making energy transitions a defining socioeconomic challenge as well as a technological and environmental one.

The aim of this Special Issue is to advance economic understandings of how energy transitions affect households, communities, and regions through affordability, access, and distributional channels. Its objectives are to (i) measure and explain energy poverty and energy inequality dynamics during transitions; (ii) assess the distributional impacts of decarbonization policies (e.g., carbon pricing, subsidy reforms, etc.) on different income groups and regions; (iii) evaluate policy schemes that protect vulnerable consumers while maintaining transition credibility; and (iv) identify financing, market design, and governance solutions that enable a just energy transition, including in low-income and climate-vulnerable countries.

The Special Issue welcomes theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented contributions that connect environmental sustainability interactions to socioeconomic outcomes such as household energy burden, energy access, thermal comfort, energy insecurity, health and well-being, and regional inequality. More specifically, submissions are encouraged across sectors and geographies, with particular attention drawn to the Global South and other countries or regions that face structural energy-related constraints. To recapitulate, contributions should also address alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals, especially affordable and clean energy, poverty reduction, and reduced inequalities.

Prof. Dr. George Halkos
Dr. Panagiotis-Stavros Aslanidis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • energy poverty
  • energy inequality
  • just transition
  • energy justice
  • energy affordability
  • distributional impacts
  • geopolitical issues
  • multi-crisis
  • sustainable development

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

31 pages, 2539 KB  
Article
Hidden Energy Poverty, the Dwelling Envelope, and the Limits of Income-Based Targeting: Household Evidence from the Coal Phase-Out Region of Western Macedonia, Greece
by Stavros P. Migkos, Androniki Katarachia, Polytimi M. Farmaki and Apostolos Tranoulidis
Energies 2026, 19(16), 3834; https://doi.org/10.3390/en19163834 - 16 Aug 2026
Viewed by 319
Abstract
Coal phase-out regions concentrate the distributional risks of the energy transition, yet the tools used to identify energy-poor households in these territories still rely mainly on income and welfare criteria. This study asks whether such criteria can identify the households that suffer. Drawing [...] Read more.
Coal phase-out regions concentrate the distributional risks of the energy transition, yet the tools used to identify energy-poor households in these territories still rely mainly on income and welfare criteria. This study asks whether such criteria can identify the households that suffer. Drawing on a survey of 706 households across six municipalities of Western Macedonia, Greece, the core territory of the national lignite phase-out, we validate a four-item Thermal Stress Index (polychoric ω = 0.885; loadings = 0.71–0.88; no differential item functioning by gender, income, or survey wave) and test nine hypotheses and one descriptive benchmark on prevalence, mechanisms, typologies, and targeting. Winter thermal inadequacy reaches 22.9%, which sits above the 19.0% national EU-SILC figure, reported as descriptive context. Dwelling energy features dominate all socioeconomic predictors of severe thermal stress (pseudo-R-squared 0.482 against 0.024), and no direct tenure association remains once envelope quality is included, while the protective association of income operates primarily through dwelling quality and is not observed across the range of inefficient dwellings. Latent class analysis identifies a hidden energy poverty class, 19.5% of households with severe experiential deprivation, above-average income, and no payment problems. A machine learning targeting audit shows that administrative criteria alone identify severely stressed households and show no discriminative capacity for identifying severely stressed households (AUC = 0.517), whereas adding dwelling and financial-strain information raises discrimination to an area under the curve of 0.938. Finally, in this sample, income-based screening is weakly associated with the households reporting severe thermal deprivation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Analysis of Sustainable Energy Transitions: Energy Poverty, Inequality, and a Just Transition)
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20 pages, 8548 KB  
Article
Energy Poverty in Extreme Climates: Thermal Retrofitting as an Alternative to Gas Subsidies in Punta Arenas, Chile
by Nicolás Valenzuela-Pezo, Cristian Muñoz-Viveros, Carlos Rubio-Bellido and Alexis Pérez-Fargallo
Energies 2026, 19(10), 2249; https://doi.org/10.3390/en19102249 - 7 May 2026
Viewed by 628
Abstract
In the extreme climate of Punta Arenas, in southern Chile, Energy Poverty (EP) has been historically addressed via a gas subsidy for heating and a discount considering the dwelling’s value, reducing the price paid by the homes by around 70% compared to the [...] Read more.
In the extreme climate of Punta Arenas, in southern Chile, Energy Poverty (EP) has been historically addressed via a gas subsidy for heating and a discount considering the dwelling’s value, reducing the price paid by the homes by around 70% compared to the national average, albeit without intervention measures for the low thermal performance of the housing stock built before 2000. This study sought to evaluate the technical, economic, and fiscal feasibility of replacing consumption subsidies with thermal retrofitting. A representative standard dwelling (V4, 114 m2) was modeled using dynamic simulation in DesignBuilder/EnergyPlus and calibrated against monthly gas consumption (July 2024–June 2025) using normalized mean bias error (NMBE) and the coefficient of variation in the root-mean-square error (CV(RMSE)) according to ASHRAE Guideline 14. The baseline and retrofitted scenarios were compared and extrapolated to the pre-2000 stock of 38,605 homes at coverage levels of 0%, 20%, 50%, and 80%. In the standard dwelling, the annual consumption decreased from 5181.5 to 702.5 m3/year (49,224 to 6674 kWh/year), a decrease of 86.4%. On an overall scale, aggregate consumption fell from 1820 GWh/year (0%) to 1562, 1090, and 608 GWh/year at 20%, 50%, and 80% coverage, respectively. With an investment of US$25,289.00 and annual fiscal savings of US$6458.54, the net present value is US$49,470.36, and the benefit/cost ratio is 2.96 over 20 years (6% discount rate), indicating that investment in the housing stock’s performance consistently reduces vulnerability and fiscal pressure. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Analysis of Sustainable Energy Transitions: Energy Poverty, Inequality, and a Just Transition)
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