Cold homes and tight budgets: measuring energy poverty and the coping strategies used by households in the Town of Bridgwater, Nova Scotia

Objective.Energy poverty occurs when households are unable to afford or access the energy services they need to meet their material and social needs.In 2019, the Town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, estimated that around 40% of their households were facing energy poverty.Embedded in a larger research project assessing the extent of energy poverty in Bridgewater and its well-being implications, my thesis aims to answer the research questions: Who experiences energy poverty in the Town of Bridgewater?How do they cope?To do so, the objectives of the thesis were to measure the prevalence of energy poverty using different indicators, identify the socioeconomic and housing characteristics associated with energy poverty, and describe the coping strategies used by households with a focus on the 'heat or eat' trade-off, which occurs when households are forced to decrease their energy consumption or their grocery spending to balance their finances.Methods.Data were collected using a community-based survey on energy needs and well-being conducted in the spring of 2022 in the Town of Bridgewater.Energy poverty was assessed using eight expenditure-based and self-reported measured.Survey respondents reported on their socioeconomic and housing characteristics, as well as answered questions about their use of coping strategies to increase thermal comfort and manage finances.Overall, 516 residents of Bridgewater completed the survey.Cross-tabulations and logistic regressions were used to analyse the data.Answers to open-ended questions on coping strategies were also analysed included in the results.Results.Within the sample, 17% of households were spending more than 10% of their income (before housing costs) on energy expenditures, and 46% had a share of energy expenditures to household income (after housing costs) over twice the national median share.Twenty-one percent reported being unable to maintain an adequate temperature in their dwelling.The prevalence of energy poverty was higher among women, households with children, lower-income households, renters, and those in dwellings in need of major repairs.The use of coping strategies was higher among women compared to men, young adults compared to other age groups, and in households with children.Accounting for socioeconomic and housing characteristics, participants facing energy poverty based on the self-reported inability to afford energy needs were 10.33 times more likely to resort to the 'heat or eat' trade-off than participants not facing energy poverty. III Conclusion.According to all measures considered in this study, at least 30% of households in the sample from the Town of Bridgewater are facing energy poverty.Several participants reported a reliance on strategies to cope with energy poverty, namely to increase thermal comfort in their home and decrease financial strain.These findings reveal the burden energy poverty represents for certain households.Better understanding the experience of households facing energy poverty will help guide effective pathways for interventions for other small towns such as Bridgewater across Canada.energy poverty three years ago, inviting me to be a part of the BridgES study, and encouraging me to pursue research at the graduate level.A further thanks

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