These days, leaders from around the world are meeting again to discuss the future of the planet at COP31. We will talk about emissions, renewable energydecarbonization and the commitments we need to make towards the next generations. But there is a dimension of climate justice that remains largely absent from this debate: people who are already aging and who also need to be able to keep up with the transformation we are building.
In Portugal, numbers help to understand the scale of the problem. In 2025, 15.6% of the population could not maintain adequately heated housecompared to 8.8% in the European Union. Among people aged 65 or over who live alone, the reality is even more worrying: 26.9% faced this difficulty, more than double the European average of 11.4%. We are talking about people for whom energy is not just an environmental or economic issue, but an essential condition for live in comfort, health and dignity.
Energy poverty cannot be explained solely by the price of electricity. It also results from inefficient housing, insufficient income and difficulties in understanding and using available services. Her own National Strategy to Combat Energy Poverty recognizes low energy literacy as one of the factors contributing to this problem. And yet, we continue to discuss the energy transition mainly based on the technologies we need to develop, without paying the same attention to the capabilities we need to guarantee to people.
The work I have been developing in the area of energy literacy has made me aware of a reality that deserves greater attention. There are older people who don’t know interpret your electricity billdistinguish the different components of the price or understand whether the contract they have is the most appropriate. There are those who are unaware that they can change supplier, those who have doubts about the support they may be entitled to and those who find it difficult to keep up with increasingly digital services. We’re not just talking about saving a few euros at the end of the month. We’re talking about the ability to make informed decisions about an essential expense.
It is particularly contradictory that, at a time when we are asking citizens to be more conscious consumers, compare offers, adopt efficient behaviors and actively participate in the energy transition, we do not guarantee that everyone has the information and tools necessary to do so. Digitization can simplify processes, but it can also create new barriers when it replaces in-person service without ensuring accessible alternatives. And the existence of a social tariff, protection mechanisms or support programs does not relieve the responsibility of ensuring that people understand their rights and are able to exercise them.
We also need to abandon the idea that climate action is primarily a cause of younger generations. Youth mobilization was decisive in putting the climate emergency on the political agenda, but intergenerational justice cannot be understood only as what we owe to future generations. It is also what we owe to the generations who are getting older todayoften in homes that were not prepared for extreme temperatures and in an energy market whose complexity is not always easy to follow.
The energy transition requires investment in more efficient infrastructure, housing and technologies. But it also requires investment in literacy, proximity monitoring, consumer protection and participation. Local authorities, social organizations, regulators and companies in the energy sector have a responsibility here that cannot be reduced to the provision of information in a website. This information needs to reach people, be understandable and allow them to decide independently.
A truly just transition is not just measured by the amount of clean energy we can produce or the emissions we can reduce. It is also measured by the ability to improve people’s living conditions throughout this process.
If we want to build a sustainable future for the next generations, we must ensure that we do not leave behind the generations that are already here. Because climate justice has no age.
The author writes according to the 1990 Orthographic Agreement
