Energies 2023, 16, 3805. https://doi.org/10.3390/en16093805 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies Review Addressing Multidimensional Energy Poverty Implications on Achieving Sustainable Development George E. Halkos * and Panagiotis-Stavros C. Aslanidis Laboratory of Operations Research, Department of Economics, University of Thessaly, 28 Octobriou 78, 38333 Volos, Greece * Correspondence: halkos@uth.gr Abstract: This study examines whether shifts in the stance of policymaking can account for the observed predictability in excess energy poverty (EP) or fuel poverty (FP) levels. Energy-related poverty is a sub- category of global poverty and can be categorized into accessibility problems related to EP and afforda- bility issues associated with FP, which have a similar but not identical meaning. Furthermore, developed and developing countries have different energy issues, as the former deal with FP and the latter with EP. However, there are discrepancies in EP not only between countries but within counties as well; for in- stance, there are differences in urban and rural areas too. Difficulties in energy access can be devastating for people living at risk of poverty. Social welfare, although at stake due to the energy crisis sparked at the same time as the warfare in eastern Europe. Renewables and green fossil fuels have price fluctuations, and inflation is also a stress factor in EP. Generally, solutions to EP and FP could be, inter alia, the adop- tion of renewables, governmental regulation, and supranational support through the green deals and sustainable development goals (SDGs). In short, the inflationary trend disequilibrium and raging war have put Agenda 2030 at stake due to the provocation of sustainability via energy-related vulnerability, insecurity, and poverty phenomena. Keywords: energy poverty; fuel poverty; multidimensional poverty; energy vulnerability; energy security; inflation; wartime 1. Introduction Energy is a pivotal element for a decent modern life, but the current energy, inflation, and war crises have augmented another problem as well—the multidimensional energy poverty. Primarily, energy-related poverty has been studied thoroughly in the UK in the 1990s and 2000s [1,2]. In the literature, the poverty associated with energy issues is called “energy poverty” (EP) and “fuel poverty” (FP) [3] (hereafter, EP will include the FP for brev- ity needs). However, there is a pivotal difference between the two terms, as EP is related to accessibility and FP to affordability problems [3–5]. According to the World Health Organization [6], the key findings on SDG 7 show that there are people without access to electricity and clean cooking that reached 789 mil- lion and 2.8 billion in 2018, respectively. Furthermore, almost 20% of the total final energy consumption of renewables was in 2017. However, what is of great importance is that from 2010 to 2017, the international financial flows towards developing countries have been doubled (from USD $10.1 billion to USD $21.4 billion), providing a helping hand to many developing countries in order to combat EP. EP is being measured in a plethora of ways, mainly based on surveys or even the creation of expenditure-based indicators [7–14]. The reason why is going to be explained in the following section that sheds light on the approaches to EP and FP. In order to capture the importance of energy in the modern lifestyle, several indica- tors have been proposed to cover this rising and alerting academic literature. Firstly, the Citation: Halkos, G.E.; Aslanidis, P.- S.C. Addressing Multidimensional Energy Poverty Implications on Achieving Sustainable Development. Energies 2023, 16, 3805. hMps://doi.org/10.3390/en16093805 Academic Editor: Paul Stewart Received: 28 February 2023 Revised: 24 April 2023 Accepted: 27 April 2023 Published: 28 April 2023 Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, SwiPerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons AMribution (CC BY) license (hMps://creativecommons.org/license s/by/4.0/).