CBS – ODISSEI Microdata Meeting – Energy Poverty in Figures

On 23 February, the next online Microdata Meeting will take place, with a presentation of Lydia Geijtenbeek (Statistics Netherlands) on ‘Energy Poverty in Figures’. With the increasing fossil fuel prices and the need to transform our energy systems, energy poverty has become an increasingly important topic. Households are energy poor when their energy bill is too high compared to their income, negatively affecting their health or social life. As a follow-up to a study of TNO (2021), Statistics Netherlands has created a file that describes energy poverty in the Netherlands through 4 different indicators. This dataset for the year 2020 is  available for researchers via the secure remote access (RA) environment. 

During her presentation, Lydia Geijtenbeek will show how these data have been constructed, how they can be used for social research, and how the already available data can be used to estimate the current levels of energy poverty.

CBS released the first version of the ‘Monitor Energiearmoede in Nederland’ on 27 January 2023. More information can be found here (in Dutch). Along with the dataset, CBS released a complimentary longread (in Dutch) in which CBS describes the methodology and the indicators used to define energy poverty. 

TNO used the dataset to perform a follow-up study with CBS into the role of energy poverty in the energy transition. This study can be found here. Additionally, TNO created an interactive map, which visualises the level of energy poverty in each Dutch municipality.

Relevant Links


Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash