Household Energy Affordability: Data and Indicators

Energy is a vital resource for societies and economies worldwide, and is at the centre of just and inclusive global energy transitions. Recent global energy crises and resulting price increases have highlighted the importance of energy affordability in ensuring decent living standards, and in enabling vulnerable populations to participate in and benefit from energy transitions.

While physical energy access has been monitored as part of the Sustainable Development Goals tracking framework (SDG 7.1), energy affordability has received comparatively less attention and remains insufficiently and inconsistently monitored across geographies.

This report addresses this gap by drawing on a consultation of experts from IEA member countries to gather national perspectives on monitoring energy affordability. It collects views on the importance of energy affordability, on relevant dimensions across countries and on current practices and approaches to monitoring, including indicator methodologies and data collection requirements.

The consultation confirms that energy affordability is seen as an increasingly important topic and reveals substantive experience in designing and implementing national definitions, strategies and monitoring frameworks. Nevertheless, important conceptual and methodological differences persist, limiting comparability across regions.

Building on this, the report reviews approaches to developing energy-affordability indicators at national level and compiling relevant data from across IEA member countries. Based on the common elements between countries, it proposes a simple and structured methodological framework to monitor energy affordability, grounded in three key building blocks: dimensions, indicators and data.

The report recognises that policy priorities play a central role in shaping indicator development and selection, and positions monitoring as part of a broader policy–data feedback process. It provides guidance to support the development of coherent and policy-relevant monitoring systems, highlighting the role of international collaboration in advancing this work.