TYPOLOGY OF EMERGING PATTERNS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN AREA IN THE ENERGY SECTOR: A TWO TIER APPROACH

Energy poverty is intensely debated lately, mainly at the political level, both in the developed and developing world. The concept of energy poverty refers to issues such as lack of the necessary infrastructure that prevents citizens from having access to various sources of energy. In the Mediterranean region, there is a divergence among countries, regarding both the energy poverty patterns and the related policy framework. Apparent differences also appear between the EU countries and non-EU countries, concerning the existing infrastructure, the energy demand, the availability of natural resources and energy sources and the related policy measures. The aim of this paper is to develop a typology of the energy poverty patterns in the Mediterranean countries and elaborate on the prospects for policy measures. The first part provides the definition of energy poverty and the patterns appearing in the Mediterranean region. The second part presents data issues on the energy consumption and production patterns in the study region. In the third part, the available data and their sources are presented, while the fourth part presents the methodological framework and the tools used in a clustering exercise in order to identify groups of countries with similar characteristics which may be addressed by a common set of policies. The clustering process consists of two separate parts, one including all the Mediterranean countries and a second clustering separately the EU and the non-EU countries in order to identify differences among the two clusters. The fifth part presents the results of the clustering process and the visualization of the new typologies. Finally, in the sixth part, follows a set of conclusions drawn from the resulting typologies, but also the prospects for policy action in the Mediterranean region.