ENERGY POVERTY AND HOUSING: A SOCIAL JUSTICE PERSPECTIVE

Equitable access to energy and housing are primary concerns for social justice. Despite the evident links between these two basic needs, the theoretical frameworks of justice and energy poverty have dealt with the issue of housing primarily through the narrow lens of residential energy efficiency. In response to this conceptual deficiency, this paper calls for the re-integration of housing into the framework of justice and energy poverty, thinking along the following three axes: material and temporal dimensions; political dimensions; and ethical and legal dimensions. To empirically illustrate the relevance of the housing-energy nexus in applied energy justice research, we present the example of two closely-related Barcelona-based social movements jointly advocating for both the right to energy and the right to housing: the Platform of People affected by Mortgages (Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca, PAH) and the Alliance against Energy Poverty (Alianca contra la Pobresa Energetica, APE). To conclude, the paper highlights the importance of housing and energy as the material foundations of a dignified life and their conflicting nature of being essential needs as well as tradable commodities.