Energy Poverty in EU countries and UkraineJournal: Herald of the Economic Sciences of Ukraine (Vol.37, No. 2)
The article explains what they understand under the notion of «energy poverty» in EU countries. It is established that the appraisal of the energy poverty problem's acuity is significantly complicated due to the lack of any standardized approach to the definition, great diversity in character, quantity, and power consumption peculiarities in various countries or just frequently mediated indicators available for estimation. Initial information for the appraisal of the level of the energy poverty can be usually obtained from sociological inquiries data. Detailed consideration is done with primary indices of the energy poverty in homesteads for the annual calculation of European energy poverty index with EU countries computed as the geometrical mean value of the sub-index of the energy poverty with European homesteads and the transport sub-index of the European energy poverty for homesteads from the first income-based quintile. Every two years Ukrainian Government Statistics Service conducts the procedure of self-appraisal of own incomes by homesteads in all regions of the country including data of material deprivation, so there are statistical information to compute the index of the similar energy poverty sub-index for European homesteads however in decile groups. An extraordinary high divergence of the index was detected between regions: from 4.8 per cent in Kyiv to 93.9 per cent in Carpathian Region. The dependency was detected between the percentages of homesteads having deficiency in money to maintain sufficiently warm temperature in their houses, and of people suffering from 4 or more of the 9 signs of deprivation that is having the very low quality of life. The article represents dynamics of the portion of the homesteads with insufficient funds to maintain a pretty warm temperature in their houses the whole heating period long subject to their financial situation. It was the most well-to-do people who declared the highest growth of the value. That was the witness of the fact that one cannot solve the problem of the energy poverty level reduction with homesteads just through the people's incomes increase. Unfortunately, power consumption in the country is still irrational. The article substantiates that decentralization and the growth of power effectiveness are exclusively prospective directions for business advance especially for those who are now involved in network or regional business providing macro-economic effect through new jobs opening meaning additional budget takings. The urgent problem of Ukraine from the viewpoint of the social protection system's improvement against the energy poverty is separation of purely power poverty fighting measures from the general maintenance system for low- income homesteads.