Fuel Poverty in the UK


In order to discuss the relationship between decarbonisation and fuel poverty, information on the definition of fuel poverty and its estimated scale is needed.
The data which follow were taken from the

ANNUAL FUEL POVERTY STATISTICS REPORT, 2018 (2016 DATA)
Published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and available at
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/719106/Fuel_Poverty_Statistics_Report_2018.pdf

The main body of the report is confined to England, but Annex C has data on the devolved nations.
Fuel poverty in England is measured using the Low Income High Costs (LIHC) indicator, under which a household is considered to be fuel poor if:
1)        its required fuel costs are above the national median level, and
2)        if it were  to spend that amount, it would be left with a residual income             below the official poverty line.
The proportion of households in England in fuel poverty was estimated to be 11.1 per cent in 2016 (approximately 2.55 million households).

ANNEX C: Fuel Poverty across the Devolved Nations
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all use a 10 per cent measure of fuel poverty. Their methodologies differ, but in general a household is considered fuel poor if it would need to spend more than 10 per cent of its income on all household fuel use. The following figures are for 2016, and give the percentage of households thought to be in fuel poverty according to the methods used in each nation:

Scotland:                   649,000 households (26.5 per cent of the total)
Wales:                       291,000 households (23 per cent of the total)
Northern Ireland:       160,000 households (22 per cent of the total).

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