Unpacking the spaces and politics of energy poverty: Path dependencies, deprivation and fuel switching in post-communist Hungary Sergio Tirado-Herrero Stefan Bouzarovski Saska Petrova University of Manchester Diana Ürge-Vorsatz Central European University
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Sergio Tirado Herrero - Spaces and politics of energy vulnerability in Hungary
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Unpacking the spaces and politics of energy poverty:
Path dependencies, deprivation and fuel switching in post-communist Hungary
Sergio Tirado-HerreroStefan Bouzarovski
Saska PetrovaUniversity of Manchester
Diana Ürge-VorsatzCentral European University
Introduction
• Need to understand the wider political and spatial aspects of energy poverty
• Central and Eastern Europe:- Growing energy poverty rates since 1990s• Social safety nets, prices, energy efficiency
• Hungary- 20+ years of increase in domestic energy prices- 10 to 30% of the population in energy poverty
as of the end of the 2000s
Energy vulnerability• ‘Energy vulnerability’ thinking
- Propensity to suffer from a lack of adequate energy services in the home
- Dynamic assessment of risk and resilience• Pathways, conditions and tipping points
- Multi-scalar conceptualisation• From single households to supra-national entities
- Risk of diminishing the agency of endangered populations
Aims and objectives
• The paper explores how energy poverty:- is embedded in infrastructural provision
systems and processes of institutional change;- influences the structure of domestic energy
demand;- shapes political debates and decisions.
• Hungary as case study- ‘Multiple transformations’ in post-communist
countries
Methodological approach • Energy poverty is ‘constructed through
diverse pathways, and is a dynamic phenomenon, not easily reduced to a single metric’ (Hall, Hards, and Bulkeley 2013)
• Indicators and measures:- Analysis of the ‘affordability gap’ - Expenditure-based indicators: energy burden• Household Budget Survey (HBS)
- Consensual or self-reported indicators• EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC)
Driving forces of EP in Hungary
• Systemic path-dependencies: socialist legacies and post-socialist reforms
• Dependency on imported natural gas- Discovery of domestic gas reserves in 1960/70s- Long-term contract with Gazprom until 2016
• Restructuring of the energy sector- Price increase and utility liberalisation- Recent turn towards statist governance
Source: hg.hu
SINGLE-FAMILY HOMES BUILT BEFORE 1992
• Over 50% of the total residential floor area in 2010• High specific energy consumption for space heating: 300 to 500 kWh m-2 year-1
Pre-fab ‘panel’ blocks with DH[Csepel, district XXI Budapest]