Objective To determine whether insulating existing houses increases indoor temperatures and improves occupants9 health and wellbeing. Design Community based, cluster, single blinded randomised study. Setting Seven low income communities in New Zealand. Participants 1350 households containing 4407 participants. Intervention Installation of a standard retrofit insulation package. Main outcome measures Indoor temperature and relative humidity, energy consumption, self reported health, wheezing, days off school and work, visits to general practitioners, and admissions to hospital. Results Insulation was associated with a small increase in bedroom temperatures during the winter (0.5°C) and decreased relative humidity (−2.3%), despite energy consumption in insulated houses being 81% of that in uninsulated houses. Bedroom temperatures were below 10°C for 1.7 fewer hours each day in insulated homes than in uninsulated ones. These changes were associated with reduced odds in the insulated homes of fair or poor self rated health (adjusted odds ratio 0.50, 95% confidence interval 0.38 to 0.68), self reports of wheezing in the past three months (0.57, 0.47 to 0.70), self reports of children taking a day off school (0.49, 0.31 to 0.80), and self reports of adults taking a day off work (0.62, 0.46 to 0.83). Visits to general practitioners were less often reported by occupants of insulated homes (0.73, 0.62 to 0.87). Hospital admissions for respiratory conditions were also reduced (0.53, 0.22 to 1.29), but this reduction was not statistically significant (P=0.16). Conclusion Insulating existing houses led to a significantly warmer, drier indoor environment and resulted in improved self rated health, self reported wheezing, days off school and work, and visits to general practitioners as well as a trend for fewer hospital admissions for respiratory conditions.

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/334/7591/460.full.pdf

Effect of insulating existing houses on health inequality: cluster randomised study in the community

http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/Public%20health%20benefits%20of%20strategies%20to%20reduce%20greenhouse.pdf

Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: household energy

Quantifying the prevalence of fuel poverty across the European Union

Recent quantitative and qualitative evidence documents a dramatic reduction in average direct UK household energy consumption in the last decade. The ‘fuel poverty gap’ in the UK (average shortfall that fuel poor households experience in affording their energy bills) has also grown substantially in that period. Here we draw on the literature on vulnerability and on recent qualitative interviews with fuel poor households to characterise the experience of energy vulnerability in the UK. Using our qualitative data, we explore energy vulnerability from the point of view of our interviewees. In doing so we identify six challenges to energy vulnerability for the fuel poor: quality of dwelling fabric, energy costs and supply issues, stability of household income, tenancy relations, social relations within the household and outside, and ill health. In analysing these challenges we find that the energy vulnerable have limited agency to reduce their own vulnerability. Further, current UK policy relating to fuel poverty does not take full account of these challenges. Any attempt to address energy vulnerability coherently in the future must engage with structural forces (policies, markets, and recognition) in order to increase household agency for change.

Fuel poverty from the bottom-up: Characterising household energy vulnerability through the lived experience of the fuel poor

Energy poverty can be seen as situation in which a household lacks a socially and materially necessitated level of energy services in the home. In the context of the European Union (EU), its causes and consequences largely coincide with those of the more narrowly defined notion of ‘fuel poverty’, which has attracted a significant amount of public attention, scientific research, and state policy in Ireland and the UK. Outside of these two countries, however, EU energy poverty scholarship, debates, and policies are embryonic. From the limited amount of research that has been published to date, it is possible to conclude that the condition is predicated upon high energy prices, low household incomes, inefficient buildings and appliances, and specific households energy needs. It is particularly widespread in Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe, where it tends to affect groups who are already vulnerable to income poverty. Recent years have seen a conceptual shift in the mainstream theorization of domestic energy deprivation, onto more complex and nuanced issues of household needs, built environment flexibility, and social resilience.

This article is categorized under: 

Energy Efficiency > Economics and Policy
Energy Policy and Planning > Economics and Policy
Energy and Development > Systems and Infrastructure

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/wene.89

Energy poverty in the European Union: landscapes of vulnerability

This paper presents findings from the qualitative arm of the Warm Homes Project, a programme of research concerned with the nature of fuel poverty, its alleviation and its relationship to family health. Much of the research into fuel poverty, which results from various combinations of low income and fuel inefficiency, has drawn upon quantitative paradigms. Experiences of, and coping with, fuel poverty have not been well explored. Data for the present study were obtained through qualitative interviews with household members about the above issues. The findings suggest that the expectations of those in fuel poverty about staying warm, and their beliefs about the relationship between warmth and health, vary considerably. Fuel poverty often had wider ramifications, impacting on quality of life in complex ways. The respondents took steps to alleviate cold, but their strategies varied. Coping was affected by informational limitations as well as cost constraints. Measures designed to alleviate fuel poverty should take into account its wider social meaning within the lives of household members.

Keeping warm and staying well: findings from the qualitative arm of the Warm Homes Project

This paper discusses the findings of two surveys, undertaken in 2000 and 2001, which investigated relationships between home energy efficiency, socio-economic status and respondent health. Data were collected through interviews with an informant from each household and energy surveys. Respondents were drawn from relatively poor households. The main health measure used in the analysis, respondent-assessed overall health, was statistically significantly related to other health indicators, including SF36 scores, the reported presence of limiting conditions and health care behaviours such as visiting the GP. Worse respondent self-assessed health was statistically significantly related to occupational, wealth and income measures of poorer socio-economic status. However, measures of heating satisfaction and sense of mastery displaced the socio-economic measures when they were included in the predictive logistic regression model for self-assessed respondent health. Objective home energy efficiency, measured by SAP ratings, was associated with health in the model independently of the subjective measure. The findings support other evidence that home energy efficiency makes an important contribution to the relationship between lower socio-economic status and poorer health, and document the combined relationship between objective and subjectively measured home energy efficiency and health.

Helen Stockton

Papers

Keeping warm and staying well: findings from the qualitative arm of the Warm Homes Project

Keeping Warm and Staying Well. Does Home Energy Efficiency Mediate the Relationship between Socio-economic Status and the Risk of Poorer Health?