Energy Poverty Response to COVID-19 and Energy Crisis in European NUTS 1 Regions

The recent energy crisis and the preceding COVID-19 pandemic impose danger on the well-being of the most vulnerable groups, causing the spread of energy poverty across Europe. This study examines the level and dynamics of energy poverty in 2019, 2021, and 2022, focusing on macro-regions (NUTS1) in 23 European countries. The data is aggregated from the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions conducted with households in all EU countries. Following the Mazziotta-Pareto approach, we put forward a new comprehensive measure of energy poverty comprising several non-substitutable indicators with the possibility of conducting intertemporal comparisons. Latent hierarchical models are built to assess the variability within and between countries. Our results indicate that 2019–2022, European regions faced diverse levels and dynamics of energy poverty within countries. Bulgaria, Lithuania, Greece, and Portugal experienced the most hardship. We note substantial regional variability and opposite dynamics in Romania, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, which calls for a mindful regional cohesion policy. While our models provide evidence of poverty convergence across regions, national policies must balance regional disparities. The COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis have impacted NUTS 1 regions in the EU countries to varying extents. The nature of these changes is often more reflective of national trends than regional ones. There is a convergence in energy poverty, signifying a reduction in areas where this issue was previously most severe.