Breathe
By Rosanety Barrios
Every year, whoever is in charge of the national energy policy announces, as a great social advance of his administration, the national electrification index. The last official figure, provided by the CFE in its 2021 annual report, was 99.08% of the population, which is undoubtedly a high percentage.
There is no doubt that life changes if you can light a light bulb at sunset at home or if you have to use candles or any fuel-burning lamp instead. But it is not enough. In social matters, energy penetration must be measured through an energy poverty index, which, by the way, has not been proposed by this or any previous administration.
What is energy poverty? I will dare to define it as the absence of basic energy services, such as electricity, the possibility of cooking and heating water with an energy source other than firewood and coal (such as LP gas or electricity), as well as living with thermal comfort in places where the cold and/or heat are extreme.
It is, therefore, a multidimensional problem, whose solution requires, in addition to a deep understanding, a proper diagnosis and a proposal of comprehensive actions to correct it. Thus, public policy will determine the form and timing, but it must undoubtedly consider that these are long-term programs, which involve accompanying communities to train them not only in technical matters, but also with basic financial education and support to correct the biases that a macho culture such as ours always has.
I hope that, up to this point, those who favor me with their reading have a very general idea of the concept.
Now let me add the reasons why fuel poverty should be addressed from a gender perspective.
It is well known that women are responsible for most of the unpaid work (home and family care). This has a direct impact on their access to education and working life, as well as on their permanence. When energy poverty exists in a community, it is women who suffer the worst consequences, both in terms of physical health (presence of respiratory diseases from cooking with firewood or charcoal) and emotional health, as they suffer from greater anxiety and fear due to not having control over financial resources and family decision making.
I give you some examples: if women have to spend a good part of their time collecting firewood for cooking, those hours can no longer be used for education or entertainment. If they die of heat while cooking or of cold during the nights, their physical health will deteriorate. If they are also unable to listen to the radio, grind with a blender and refrigerate food, the vicious circle closes: more and more hours must be invested in the care of the home and family with a mood also increasingly deteriorated, affected by the absence of an implementable solution within a reasonable period of time.
As you can see, the challenge is enormous and cannot be solved only by addressing the price of gasoline or the presence of a light bulb at home. It is essential that the energy policy finally addresses these needs of the population, outlines a route and commits widely trained human resources and financial resources that, if they are only public, will surely be scarce, because they always are.
There seems to be an international consensus on a direct relationship between renewable energy and gender. This is possible due, from my point of view, to a technological reality: solar energy can already be produced at home and used not only to meet family needs, but can be used by communities as a whole, which brings solutions to various problems, such as greater security, better mood and opportunities to perform entrepreneurial tasks that energy poverty prevents (embroidering or knitting when the sun has already gone down, for example).
For there to be social energy communities, the government must stop seeing itself as the great energy life-giving parent and understand its stewardship under 21st century rules.
If the next government decides to attract private investment again for large-scale projects, it could create energy communities with a social character and strengthen the now almost forgotten Universal Electricity Service Fund (FSUE), adapting its operating rules.
The funds of the new EUSF should be dedicated to accompanying communities from a very early stage to provide technical and financial training with a gender perspective, since the equipment, rather than being given away, requires financing at a social rate, since they are undertakings that contribute to a fair and inclusive energy transition.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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