Energy poverty: the thermostat of inequality in Greece

Greece is struggling in the extreme heat wave that has been going on lately, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius. This condition brings to the surface a subtle crisis, that of energy poverty, a condition with serious consequences. Between 23 June and 2 July 2025, an estimated 175 people died in Athens due to the prolonged heatwave, with 96 of them directly linked to climate change, according to a recent study by the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College. The same report notes that the human factor – through the burning of fossil fuels – increased heatwave temperatures by up to 4°C, intensifying the phenomenon.

Vulnerable groups – the elderly, people on low incomes and migrants – have to survive in a climate where coolness is not a right but a privilege. What is unfolding is not just an extreme weather event, but a social shock that reveals inequality in access to protection, demonstrating the gap between survival and the inability to adapt in an overheated world. The majority of the deaths involved people over 65 years of age, confirming the age-related vulnerability to heat crises. However, mortality does not only depend on age, but also on whether a person can cool their home, afford energy costs or access health support.

In Greece, according to data from INZEB (a Greek nonprofit promoting energy efficiency and sustainable building practices) and Heinrich Böll Stiftung, 17.7% of households said they cannot keep their homes sufficiently cool in summer, while 28.7% have difficulty covering energy costs in general. Inequalities in energy access are exacerbated in the summer months, with critical shortages of cooling systems in low-income areas. Thus, heat waves act as multipliers of inequality and bring to light a double injustice: those who pollute the least are hit the hardest, and those with fewer means of protection are also the most exposed to the impacts of climate deregulation.

The hidden cost of deregulation

Both experience and evidence show that energy poverty in Greece is not just an inability to pay bills but the epitome of the failure of an energy model that, despite billions in state funding, continues to pass the biggest burden on to the consumer. Greece, although it has spent over €11 billion since 2021 to mitigate the effects of the energy cost crisis, remains the country with the highest relative burden on households across the EU, with wholesale electricity prices up to 12 times higher than in the Nordic countries. This condition is neither natural nor inevitable. It reflects the structural inability of the Greek energy system to invest in renewables, storage and interconnection networks, but also the timidity to break the dependence on an inward-looking, fragmented and poorly regulated energy landscape. In South-Eastern Europe – and especially in Greece – energy access is shaped by geopolitical and economic inequalities that the green transition must break rather than reproduce.

On the other hand, the energy problem in Greece is not only a macroeconomic issue. It is an issue of everyday life. Poverty, the lack of resources can be read in categories but at the end of the day it is about the sufficiency of means, money and therefore the facilities that everyone has to maintain in order to exist in this context.

Source:https://communitylawandmediation.ie/blog-the-energy-poverty-action-plan/

According to CPER (Centre of Planning and Economic Research), regions such as Western Greece and the Peloponnese have over 20% of the population declaring themselves unable to heat their homes adequately. At the same time, the age of buildings, lack of insulation and inefficient appliances make residents “hostage” to an environmentally and economically hostile home. It is no coincidence that energy poverty is associated with physical and mental illness, with higher rates of depression and increased risk of cardiorespiratory disease. When the solutions are limited to the Energy Efficiency Programme (Εξοικονομώ) and ‘behavioural adaptation’, the state requires citizens to manage a crisis that they did not cause themselves.

The repetition of the same inequalities in every heat wave reveals that energy poverty in Greece is not a symptom, but a status quo. Deregulation policies, the insistence on market self-regulation, and the absence of a social safety net for vulnerable groups, turn access to energy into a luxury. In recent years, with the war in Ukraine and the ongoing geopolitical turmoil, it has become clear how irregular and insecure a lasting access to energy is; however, energy must be redefined not as a tradable commodity, but as a fundamental social right on a pan-European level with the appropriate strategy, leaving no room for state or transnational dependencies. We must ensure access to energy, with a stable social tariff and public policies that do not ‘punish’ poverty but target the structural inequalities that generate it.

The voices of the vulnerable are not asking for philanthropy; they are demanding a paradigm shift, with substantial public investment in energy efficiency, with protection strategies that recognise that security and dignity begin with a warm, cool and sustainable home. If climate policy continues to ignore its social implications, the costs will not only be economic. It will be profoundly humane.