According to a new study conducted from the World Bank, around 39% of Albanians suffer from energy poverty. There are very few research studies in the country who shows clear evidences on the main causes of the situation. Refering to a recent research study conducted in the municiplity of Shkoder (Struga, Meivis, 2025) in 3 administrative units is revealed that 44% of the respondents had delays in paying the electricity bill, 42% of the respondents had never delays and 8% had delays only 3-5 times. Moreover, around 70% of the respondend answered that the level of electricity price is high.
Additionally, another component of the survey was the level of energy perfomance of the buildings, where 40% of the repondend answered ‘‘unsatisfied’’, 24% neutral and only 2% very satisifed. A very interesting figure from the research, is about the share of incomes of households that goes for energy bill. Based on the respondents, it shows that 30% of the total incomes goes for electricity bill. The threshold value for EU countries is 9%. The research took into consideration as well other social, economic and environmental components which worsen the level of energy poverty.
Based on some figures identified above there are some questions that can be initial points for disccusions:
- What measures can be proposed to alleviate energy poverty mainly in the rural ares?
- How academia can contribute in R&D (Research and Development) to address energy poverty?
- How can we engage communities, private sector and public insitutions in working towwards EP?
