sustainability Article Mapping Regional Vulnerability to Energy Poverty in Poland Lilia Karpinska 1, * , Slawomir ´ Smiech 2 , João Pedro Gouveia 3 and Pedro Palma 3   Citation: Karpinska, L.; ´ Smiech, S.; Gouveia, J.P.; Palma, P. Mapping Regional Vulnerability to Energy Poverty in Poland. Sustainability 2021, 13, 10694. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su131910694 Academic Editor: Brantley Liddle Received: 27 August 2021 Accepted: 22 September 2021 Published: 26 September 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Microeconomics, Cracow University of Economics, 31-510 Cracow, Poland 2 Department of Statistics, Cracow University of Economics, 31-510 Cracow, Poland; smiechs@uek.krakow.pl 3 CENSE—Center for Environmental and SustainabilityResearch, NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal; jplg@fct.unl.pt (J.P.G.); p.palma@campus.fct.unl.pt (P.P.) * Correspondence: karpinsl@uek.krakow.pl; Tel.: +48-12-293-5379 Abstract: Raising concerns about the effectiveness of the energy poverty policy actions in Poland, such as Clean Air and Stop Smog, brings forward the need to apply different strategies to identify the energy poor. More than 13.7% of Polish households were energy poor in 2018 according to the ability-to-keep-home-warm indicator. This study proposes enhancing the model-based approach to measure households’ energy poverty. Our goal is to assess regional vulnerability to energy poverty in Poland. The study relies on three national datasets and is conducted in two steps. The Energy Consumption Survey (2018) and the Household Budget Survey (2018) provide data for modeling household’s energy poverty in the first step. The Local Data Bank (2019) gives information on the potential factors increasing regional vulnerability to energy poverty evaluated in the second step. We apply multiple linear regression to identify energy-poor households and principal components analysis to examine the regions’ vulnerability factors. As a result, we produce several maps showing the spatial distribution of vulnerability to energy poverty in 380 Polish districts. Our results indicate that some northern, southern and eastern districts in Poland are primary targets of energy poverty policy actions. Keywords: energy poverty; hidden energy poverty; energy poverty vulnerability; regions; Poland; principal components analysis 1. Introduction The Energy Policy strategy of Poland that will remain in place until 2040 [1] discusses the approach to improve the economy’s energy efficiency and to respond to energy poverty and low-stack emissions problems. The recently adopted Stop Smog program [2] further states that the energy poor are the main target of low-carbon projects, co-financed by the state and implemented locally. This program supports the already-implemented policy actions regarding house renovations [3]. At the same time, there is no definition of energy poverty in the country, which makes program realization more challenging since there is no specific national policy umbrella for the measures design. Instead, the law authors stipulate that targeted populations are low-income and live in single-family buildings in areas detailed in the anti-smog bill [4]. Therefore, policies can target specific groups of people due to their socioeconomic profile (e.g., low-income, elderly), though energy poverty also has significant spatial manifestations. For example, the smog that causes premature deaths is a local problem; thus, when prioritizing energy poverty and mitigation measures, it is important to consider spatial targeting. This study provides policy-makers with more information on the spatial distribution of energy poverty in Poland, looking deeper into regional patterns. Current studies on energy poverty in Poland use either the EU-SILC microdata or the Household Budget Surveys (HBS). In both cases, the spatial identification of energy poverty is limited to macro-regions (i.e., the highest level of administrative division), which are large on the Sustainability 2021, 13, 10694. https://doi.org/10.3390/su131910694 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability