Energy poverty affects numerous households across the globe and has several key implications and concerns for public health and social equity. Energy poverty is defined as “the lack of access to modern and affordable energy services”. Individuals or communities in energy poverty face limitations in accessing reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy. This review paper examines a focused subset of recent research on energy poverty highlighted by the “NSF 2026: Priorities and Research Needs for an Equitable Energy Transition” workshop and the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Justice Policy and Analysis to help frame energy poverty’s impacts on policy, poverty alleviation, environmental impact, and social inequity. This review paper uses five themes to organize previous energy poverty work: (1) Energy Poverty and Justice Definitions and Metrics; (2) Behavioral Aspects of Energy Poverty; (3) Efficacy of Energy Assistance Programs; (4) Efficiency of Energy Efficiency Policy; (5) The Energy Transition and Environmental and Energy Justice. We found that the literature examined how comprehensive assessment of energy poverty requires going beyond standard statistics and metrics and must include an understanding of how underserved households interact with energy. We found strong optimism for the clean energy transition’s ability to significantly alleviate energy poverty, but only if policymakers include equity. Finally, we found that while there is plenty of work highlighting deficiencies there is a dearth of work examining successful implementations and how to replicate them which will be needed if the clean energy transition is to match its potential.

This paper provides a new perspective on the trade-offs between housing location and transportation in Mexico City. Fieldwork provides detailed, community-level information on residents’ commutes across two neighborhoods that differ in their proximity to the urban core, and the consolidation of local retail economies. After controlling for household income, a residence in the peripheral housing development of Los Alamos increases commute times by 114 to 139 percent when compared with the informal community of Isidro Fabela in Mexico City. Informal workers spend 42 percent less time commuting than formal workers because they work in businesses within their local retail economy.

This article discusses a course at The University of Texas at Austinwhich sought to facilitate doctoral students’ development of scholarly articles while simultaneously fostering their sense of scholarly identity. The article was co-authored by the instructor and two cohorts of doctoral students based on immediate as well as retrospective learning outcome assessments. The social constructivist approach to writing pedagogy fostered students’ scholarly identities and demystified the publication process. However, efforts should be made to maintain the practice of writing, sharing, and reviewing and the course should more explicitly foster critical reflections on the relationship between writing, scholarly identity, and knowledge production.

Given the implications of energy use in housing units for global warming, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to examine greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Although informal settlements, currently known as colonias populares, or barrios, house most of the urban population in Latin America, there is a poor understanding of how people in these communities use energy and contribute to GHG emissions. This investigation provides a comprehensive analysis of resource consumption in Mexico City’s colonia popular, including self-help housing, household energy consumption, and transportation. As there is no spatially specific data on energy use, the author conducted field research in the informal community of Isidro Fabela, founded in the 1960s. Isidro Fabela is an illuminating community that helps understand the energy use of informal settlements at advanced stages of urban consolidation. A mixed-method research approach served to collect empirical data through observations, household surveys, and in-depth interviews. Research sheds light on the efficient and sustainable ways in which families use energy, materials, and resources during self-help construction, and through their daily lives, in their community. The community-based LCA assessment finds that the contribution of Isidro Fabela to GHG emissions is 50% of the average impact in Mexico City. Natural gas or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) consumption for water heating is the most significant contributor to GHG emissions because families use inefficient heaters. Interestingly, by using public transportation and even walking, residents moderate the contribution of work commutes to GHG emissions. Therefore, climate change policy should enhance low-energy practices in informal settlements, by improving access to energy-efficient technologies and public transportation, to help families contribute further to GHG mitigation in Mexico City and elsewhere in Latin America.

This paper proposes a replicable, data-driven index to identify informal subdivisions and measure levels of peri-urban housing informality. Dallas (Texas) and Catawba (North Carolina) county assessment data, a review of the literature, and insights from qualitative research in North Texas yielded variables which were reduced to two factors through exploratory factor analysis. We identified 128 and fifty-three highly informal subdivisions in Dallas and Catawba counties, respectively. This work highlights the pervasiveness of peripheral informal subdivisions and helps guide planners’ efforts to locate and assist the most precarious subdivisions.