The Dominican Republic is among the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean with the highest prices of energy products and services, including liquefied gas, natural gas, electricity, among others.
Next to the country are Barbados, Chile, Panama and Uruguay, according to the study Development of indicators of energy poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, published this month by the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC).
The report also notes that here in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Panama and Uruguay lower-income quintiles spend between 19% and 15% of their income on energy expenditure.
The report notes that excessive spending to meet energy needs conditions the well-being of households.
The Dominican Republic also stands out among the countries with the highest consumption of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), with the highest prices of kerosene and where households have to spend more to acquire efficient refrigeration technologies.
The country also stands out for the high prices of the systems used for cooking food, both technologies that use electricity and those that use gas.
“Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic show similar trends in food cooking, where prices are more than double the weighted average of other countries“Except for Honduras,” the report said.
The document details that in the case of built-in countertops (cooking appliances) for gas, prices range between US $ 500 and US $ 1,000, and electric ones exceed US $ 1,000 in the country.
The study concludes that in terms of equity in access to energy, in the region there are significant barriers in prices and high-efficiency technologies and a marked inequality in terms of energy costs of households.
“In a region marked by inequality, access to energy reproduces the socio-economic conditions of the countries in the region, which creates a worrying picture for the prospects of a fair energy transition,” the report’s authors warn.
They add that although the complementarity of energy efficiency measures could be positioned as a solution both to reduce economic pressure on households and to reduce their energy consumption based on fossil fuels, the high price of artifacts from greater efficiency hinders autonomous technological change in households.
Finally they point out that in terms of energy quality the results indicate that the stability of electricity supply in the countries of the region is far from international quality standards. In this sense, they point out that in some countries this gap is related to the number of interruptions, while in others with fewer interruptions, the delay in the replacement of the service is worrying.