​​The situation in which a significant number of people whose well-being is negatively affected by very low or no consumption of energy (due to reasons like high electricity cost or lack of proper access), use of dirty or polluting sources of energy or fuels, and/or excessive time spent collecting fuel to meet basic energy needs, is known as Energy Poverty.

As electrical energy is the driving force behind various categories of developments of the modern day world, energy poverty causes several indirect adverse effects to a given community. For instance, spending excessive time collecting fuel, and/or very low consumption of energy can hamper modern education as well as limit and/or slow down productivity, and threatening to cause a whole chain of further problems, whereas the use of dirty or polluting energy sources poses its own sequence of adverse social, environmental, and health effects.​