Cenários de consumo de energia domiciliar no estado do Rio de Janeiro: a contribuição da eficientização para uma reflexão sobre a pobreza energética

Abstract

Energy efficiency has impacts in many areas, such as economy, environment and the quality of life enjoyed by individuals, as well as improved security of energy supply. In Brazil, there are already some energy efficiency programs to guide and encourage the practice of efficiency, including the incentive to distributed microgeneration. Thus, energy efficiency and distributed microgeneration can positively influence the process of reducing energy poverty. In short, this represents the difficulty or inability to access the choice of adequate energy services and can happen through a technical (linked to basic infrastructure) or economic bias (households’ ability to pay). Therefore, the present study shows an analysis based on the elaboration of two home energy consumption scenarios for a time horizon to be finished in 2030. One scenario reproduces the trend energy consumption, based on the state energy matrix, and the other embraces some measures of energy efficiency and distributed microgeneration. It is intended to show that the application of the measures of energy efficiencies directly impacts the consumption of electric energy, reducing it, obviously. This reduction is evident from the comparison of both scenarios and, consequently, it acts on the households' ability to pay in relation to the cost of energy. So it is possible to show that energy efficiency is an element that can contribute to the fight against energy poverty.