Demystifying the authentic attributes of electricity-poor populations: The electrification landscape of rural off-grid island communities in the Philippines

Lorafe Lozano and Evelyn B. Taboada

Energy Policy, 2020, vol. 145, issue C

Abstract: Globally, there is now a substantial decrease in unelectrified households. This unidimensional measure, however, fails to convey the level of electricity access enjoyed by these households, with electricity poverty (EP) still considered prevalent. The multi-faceted nature of EP is already recognised with several multidimensional indices proposed that are still oriented towards the binary approach of either having or not having access to certain attributes. This paper presents the Household Electricity Poverty Matrix (HEPM), a practical tool that assigns tier levels to household electricity access attributes. In this study, EP is measured in three Philippine islands and an aggregated index is compared with that of the Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) approach. Results suggest that Gilutongan and Pangan-an, both having less than 24-h electricity access, experience high EP incidence while Cobrador Island, with 24-h access, has relatively lower EP incidence. MEPI, on the other hand, classifies Gilutongan and Cobrador as having low incidence and Pangan-an as having moderate EP incidence. This work demonstrates that HEPM is a better approach to realistically assess community electrification and can serve as a good basis in enhancing electrical energy policy towards closing the electricity access gap and providing its socio-economic relevance to the target communities.

Keywords: Electrical energy poverty; Multi-tier framework; Rural electrification; Isolated islands; Off-grid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421520304420
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:145:y:2020:i:c:s0301421520304420

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111715

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().