Brazil reports 99.8% nominal household electricity coverage in its 2022 demographic census, yet this headline figure obscures three structurally distinct layers of energy insecurity: residual absolute exclusion affecting approximately 278,000 people, qualitative insecurity of supply captured by service continuity indicators (DEC/FEC), and economic-functional insecurity among households connected to but unable to use the grid effectively. Existing monitoring instruments, the Brazilian Observatory for Energy Poverty Eradication (OBEPE/EPE), the High Resolution Electricity Access (HREA) product, and the Multi-Tier Framework, do not combine these layers at sub-municipal resolution. We introduce the Índice de Comunidades em Insegurança Energética (ICIE; Community Energy Insecurity Index), a seven-dimension multidimensional index operating at the sub-municipal scale of communities, small population clusters delineated by the spatial subtraction of VIIRS nighttime radiance from LandScan population grids. Building on the Alkire-Foster counting methodology, the Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI), and the energy justice tradition, the ICIE combines: (D1) nighttime access from VIIRS VNL v2.2, (D2) household energy services from Census 2022 microdata, (D3) grid infrastructure proximity and DEC-measured supply quality from ANEEL SIGEL, (D4) economic capacity from Census 2022 microdata, (D5) land use and occupation from MapBiomas Collection 10, (D6) climate vulnerability, and (D7) racial census data. We apply a minimum-viable four-dimension configuration (D1–D4) to the state of Pernambuco, analyzing 341,867 community polygons covering 3,745 km² of residual darkness. Results are classified into five absolute quintiles on the 0–1 scale: Q1 (moderate, 0.00–0.20), Q2 (high, 0.20–0.40), Q3 (very high, 0.40–0.60), Q4 (severe, 0.60–0.80), and Q5 (critical, 0.80–1.00). The distribution reveals a systemic and capillary pattern of insecurity concentrated in the São Francisco and Araripe hinterlands: 83.6% of communities fall in Q3 (very high insecurity), 9.9% in Q4 (severe), and 0.7% in Q5 (critical). At the indicator level, 39.6% of communities exhibit zero VIIRS radiance (total darkness) and 75.6% show radiance at or below one digital number. The ten most critical municipalities cluster in two territorial groups: Afrânio, Santa Filomena, Petrolina and Dormentes in the São Francisco hinterland; Exu, Ipubi, Moreilândia, Bodocó and Araripina in the Araripe region. Contrary to conventional infrastructure-expansion framings, mean distance to transmission infrastructure is moderate (~45 km), indicating that the dominant driver of insecurity in Pernambuco is ineffective connection rather than absolute remoteness. Only 6.6% of identified polygons exhibit genuine infrastructure remoteness (D3 > 0.70); for the remaining 93.4%, the binding constraint is the local articulation between distribution network, consumer connection, and effective capacity to use energy. We argue that a community-scale index operating as an open public good is both methodologically necessary, capturing forms of insecurity invisible to municipal aggregates, and politically productive, translating satellite-era remote sensing into distributive justice instruments for vulnerable community populations.
Leal et al. (Thu,) studied this question.