Energy poverty is one of the crucial socio-economic problems of the modern world, particularly affecting vulnerable groups of the population. The lack of a common, effective way of measuring energy poverty is detected as a major weakness in handling the issue, mainly due to the inability of modeling the objective domestic energy needs at a country level, a fact that makes the application of the official definition of energy poverty impossible.
Thus, the subject of the thesis is the modeling of the required energy consumption at country level and the correct application of the definition of energy poverty. At the same time, such a model leads to the parameterization of the factors contributing to energy poverty, as well as to the determination of their weighting factors. The above goals are achieved through the development of the Stochastic Model of Energy Poverty (SMEP). The model was developed for Greece, as a country-level application. As a case study, the mountainous population of Greece was selected, as a population group particularly vulnerable to energy poverty, but also due to the high importance of mountainous regions of the planet. Through the development of the model (SMEP), a more accurate estimation of energy poverty is achieved, the weighting factors of the various parameters affecting energy poverty at a given country are determined and underestimated but important aspects of energy poverty are highlighted, through the introduction of new indicators.
