Energy poverty in Spain is declining, but there is still work to be done. In the winter of 2024, more than 8.5 million people (17.6% of the population) were unable to heat their homes properly, a figure that improves three points compared to 2023, the year in which it peaked. In addition, one in ten families had to delay paying their energy bills, which is “alarming,” according to the study’s authors. Report on energy poverty indicators in Spain 2024 It was prepared by the Head of the Department of Energy and Poverty at Pontificia Comillas University and presented last Thursday. The study confirms that these data are “bad,” as the ban on cutting off supplies to beneficiaries of the social grant was withdrawn as of January 2026.
The private income needed by vulnerable households to pay for the energy needed to maintain adequate thermal comfort and obtain an adequate level of energy services was €150, €18 less than in 2023, thanks to lower electricity prices. To try to reduce this energy poverty data, Elisa Carbonell, project coordinator of the European Network against Poverty and Social Exclusion (EAPN), asked for “procedures to be made easier so that people can request public assistance to pay for electricity or gas.”
The report’s authors highlighted that electrical social reward works. The study presented shows that this number drops by half for those who receive this assistance. Therefore, they asked the government not only to maintain it, but to change it so that it includes more families. The latest data indicate that eight out of ten potential beneficiaries of this public assistance do not receive it.
Moreover, the number of households spending “disproportionately” on energy has barely decreased. Thus, 16.5% of people spent more than 7.4% of their income on heating, something that Efrain Centeno, director of the chair, described as “catastrophic”, and for this reason it is necessary “to remain alert, because the indicators are hardly improving, showing that the problem is far from being solved”. Carbonell also requested that departments “become more involved in combating the phenomenon that affects so many people.” We must add to this that 15% of households have to reduce other basic expenses, such as those related to food, in order to pay heating bills, something that one of the authors of the study, Roberto Parrilla, described as “very painful that this situation exists that we as a society do not face.”
Order is important
One of the developments presented in this report is the comparative study between families that own a home and those that rent. Thus, energy poverty affects 29.9% of renters, and this number drops to 17.6% for those who own a home. Centeno highlighted that this data shows that “energy poverty depends not only on income, but also on household.”
This is the energy poverty we see. However, 27.1% of households are very close to being unable to heat their homes properly. This scale is defined by the study’s authors as hidden energy poverty, which is, in Centineo’s words, “poor families having to juggle heating their home in the winter.”
This phenomenon is also characterized by geographical differences. Thus, Extremadura is the autonomous community in which most people have difficulty paying their energy bills (23%), while in Madrid, Cantabria, the Basque Country, Navarra, La Rioja, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands it is lower: 9%.