National Energy Action - NEA

National Energy Action (NEA) is the UK fuel poverty charity, committed to improving the quality of life of vulnerable people living in cold homes. There are a number a definitions of fuel poverty, most of which focus on the proportion of income that people have to spend on keeping warm, clean, and well lit in their home. A proportion of income however cannot explain it’s true affects. Try thinking of fuel poverty this way: it is the cold that makes your fingers raw and your blood thicken, the misery of having to wash in cold water and go to bed early because you cannot afford to have the lights and heating on; it is the damp condensation of your breath in the cold mornings; it is making the decision between paying to have the heating on long enough to get warm, or using that money to feed yourself. The cold and the damp make your limbs hard to work, especially as you get older. You become more prone to illness and disease and you risk heat attack, strokes, hypothermia, and injury from trips and falls. Children are more prone to developing chest infections and respiratory condition such as asthma. Clothes go unwashed, hair goes uncleaned. Their school attainment levels drop and they slowly become cut off from those around them. That is fuel poverty, not proportions of income to energy expenditure; some things are more important to feel than to measure.