Making an inclusive and gender aware energy policy

Paper

Date	November 2024
Author	Prof. Dr. Joy Clancy

Context

This paper is an output of sub-task 2 of the Gender and Energy Research Programme within the User-Centred Energy Systems (UsersTCP) which is part of the IEA Technology Collaboration Programme. The sub-task set out to gain an understanding of the systematic inertias in the sociotechnical energy system hindering the formation of gender aware policies and interventions and then to identify ways of countering the inertias. This paper presents a synthesis of three case studies carried out within the subtask with some supporting evidence from other sources. The cases looked at different aspects of energy policy in three countries in Europe. The case studies of Austria and Sweden make gender analyses of their country’s Integrated Energy and Climate Plans (Badieijaryani et al., 2022; Michael and Hultman, 2023). The case studies of Austria and the Netherlands look at the gender awareness of two actors in energy policy formulation. The Austrian case focuses on energy consultants (Hausner et al., 2023) and the Netherlands case (Clancy et al., 2024) looks at how the issue of energy poverty is framed, and policy responses are formulated by policy workers.

The paper starts with an outline of current understanding of energy poverty and its gender dimensions. It is followed by an analysis of energy policies in the three countries from a gender perspective. We then make some recommendations of how policy responses to energy poverty can be more gender-responsive and socially inclusive. We finish with some examples of good practice.