Brazilian Journal of Enviromnent
Open Access Journal
CiteScore
0.5
Indexada na
SCOPUS
QUALIS
B2
2021-2024
quadriênio
Open Access Journal
0.5
Indexada na
SCOPUS
B2
2021-2024
quadriênio
Meio Ambiente e Ciências Sociais | Vol. 14 Issue 2 (2026)
Chemical Engineer with a PhD in Environmental Sciences, a Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering, and over 10 years of professional experience and 4 years in university teaching. Skilled in: (1) water and effluent treatment, (2) managing budgets and work plans, (3) using academic online platforms for research management, for example reference managers, statistical software, VOSviewer, Bibliometrix, and related tools.
Published in January 22, 2026
Energy poverty limits the ability to maintain healthy indoor temperatures in social housing, increasing risks from cold and heat and widening inequities. The aim was to describe the evolution and main foci of the literature on energy poverty and thermal comfort in social housing. A bibliometric analysis was conducted in Scopus using a search performed on 29 December 2025, followed by metadata cleaning and normalisation, and analysis in Bibliometrix and VOSviewer using Lotka’s law, Bradford’s law, co-authorship and Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS). In addition, an operational synthesis of indicators and formulas was developed to measure energy poverty and thermal comfort in residential and social housing. A total of 370 documents published between 2002 and 2026 were analysed across 117 sources, with an annual growth rate of 5.95% and 25.54 citations per document. Articles predominated (266, 71.9%), followed by conference papers (53, 14.3%), reviews (25, 6.8%), and book chapters (23, 6.2%). The dataset included 1,128 authors, with 3.89 co-authors per document and 25.68% international co-authorship. Output concentrated from 2017 onwards and peaked in 2023 with 62 documents. Energy and Buildings led with 39 publications, and the United Kingdom and Spain ranked first with 84 and 71 documents. These results help set research priorities and inform efficiency and health protection policies in social housing, while providing an operational measurement basis to assess energy poverty and thermal comfort using consistent criteria.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2026 Walter Manuel Hoyos-Alayo
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8683-1635