Fuel poverty kills vulnerable people, including older people

I came across an intriguing report about fuel poverty among older people (and other vulnerable people), written in 2011 for Friends of the Earth, the environmental charity, by Sir Michael Marmot. You may wonder why FoE are doing stuff on fuel poverty: their website connects this with energy efficiency contributing to a good relationship between humanity and the environment. You may also wonder how Marmot (a public health medic) comes to be writing all this stuff: of course he doesn’t, he has a team paid for by sucking up research grants from organisations which very broadly fit within his main research theme that tackling health inequalities is a crucial part of improving health nationally and internationally. Presumably, he looks at what they are doing and so his signature on the report gives it added credibility.

Link to the FoE report by Sir Michael Marmot’s team. 

Link to the FoE website on fuel poverty and energy efficiency. 

It’s mainly a literature review, and it collects up some very interesting figures. Among them, is this graph, which shows the excess deaths in different years from 1999 to 2010 due to cold. The point is that, particularly for older and other vulnerable people, cold is a real health hazard, and therefore fuel poverty is an important issue. The NHS spends a lot of money treating people for disease caused by poor heating in private sector housing, according the a quotation from the Chief Medical Officer of the Department of Health in the FoE report.

You are in fuel poverty if you spend more than 10% of your disposable income on heating and lighting. There are three reasons for getting into fuel poverty. Obviously one is how rich your household is; the rich can afford their fuel. The other two are the cost of fuel and how well-insulated your house is.