Planning the expansion of a country's energy supply requires identifying and understanding the energy consumption patterns of the different producing segments and families. Therefore, understanding the residential sector's energy demand disaggregated by income classes can contribute significantly to improving energy planning and forecasting models, and designing better-targeted public policies.
Electricity consumption in the Brazilian residential sector reflects the great socioeconomic inequality that has historically marked the country in regional terms and by income class. Annual per capita consumption ranges from 371 kWh (equivalent to residential consumption per capita in Morocco) for the lowest income class to 2,221 kWh (equivalent to residential consumption per capita in Japan) for the highest income class in 2019. Concerning the concentration of electricity consumption by income classes in 2019, the four lowest income classes (up to 5 minimum wages), which together represented around 78% of national households, were responsible for 58% of residential electricity demand; while the three highest income classes (more than 5 minimum wages), which together represented around 22% of national households, were responsible for 42% of residential electricity demand.
The fact sheet also proposes an indicator to measure and monitor the inequality in the distribution of the residential sector's electricity consumption by income classes – the Residential Sector's Electrical Gini Index. The evaluation of the Residential Sector's Electrical Gini Index for Brazil from 2005 to 2019, as well as the other results of the fact sheet, can be found in the Fact Sheet 'Residential Electricity Consumption by Income Classes'.
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