Stefan Bouzarovski

The University of Manchester

This paper examines the spatial and social differences in people's lack of access to adequate energy and transport services in the UK. We respond to the need for developing a differentiated understanding of both the drivers and expressions of this ‘double energy vulnerability’ (DEV), while seeking to integrate and analyse relevant information from...

Policy Highlights To achieve the recommendation stated in the chapter title, we propose the following: Policymakers should demand more open and inclusive energy modelling processes to ensure that stakeholders can meaningfully contribute to the process. Policymakers should recognise the critical role of the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in co...

What does it mean to build an equitable and just power system, and how do metrics used to assess energy justice affect the power industry? Across the world, countries are undergoing an energy transition. In the past, energy system build-out and operations have left some communities more heavily burdened than others (e.g., higher levels of air pollu...

Dramatic increases in global energy prices in 2022 have sharpened focus on the suffering experienced by people living in energy poverty – a situation where they are unable to afford the energy required to meet their basic needs. In many countries, providing energy advice to householders is part of a wider strategy to assist those who are experienci...

This contribution to the debate on Russia, Europe and the colonial present brings together several closely linked events which – alongside the people participating in them – have unleashed enough kinetic energy to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of people in just 12 months. Being inspired and challenged, in equal measure, by Stefan Bouzarovski'...

This paper foregrounds the use of “Living Labs” as instruments for the delivery of just low carbon transformations. Living Labs are commonly understood as stakeholder-centred, iterative and open-innovation ecosystems that involve multiple forms of co-creation and engagement among different actors in a given territory. Over a period of three years,...

Offering a unique and critical perspective on energy justice, this Handbook delves into an emerging field of inquiry encapsulating multiple strands of scholarship on energy systems. Covering key topics including generation, transmission, distribution and demand, it explores fundamental questions surrounding policy, climate change, security and soci...

The capacity of the state to develop and implement policy at the complex nexus of energy infrastructure, social inequality and housing is indicative of the political priorities of governing structures and, by extension, the nature of statecraft more generally. We compare and contrast the energy poverty amelioration policies of two former Yugoslav a...

Energy poverty is a far-reaching concept that intrinsically bridges numerous fields of study, ranging from engineering to anthropology and medical science to social psychology. The profound implications of energy poverty on the quality of life globally have also led to a wide range of metrics and policies aimed at measuring it and alleviating it, a...

Households in the private rented sector (i.e., households renting properties at a market rate from a private landlord), and especially those of lower income, face far more energy poverty issues than the general population, meaning that they are often unable to afford socially and materially required levels of energy services. In this context, energ...

In Australia there is limited understanding of the scale and nature of energy hardship or poverty. Energy poverty remains a concept with no clear definition and therefore no clear objectives, targets, metrics for data collection nor institutions to monitor and report on. Europe, in the last decade, has gone from limited public recognition of, and p...

This article maps the socio-technical interconnections between atmospheric systems, on the one hand, and the infrastructural networks associated with the extraction, production, transport and consumption of energy resources, on the other hand. The exchanges, interdependencies and injustices that arise at this interface can broadly be understood as...

Preoccupations for the widening gap between irrigated and rainfed areas are central to debates addressing the agrarian crisis in semi-arid India. Yet policies are driven by a catch-up mentality that points towards an irrigated model of agriculture, demarcating rainfed areas as spaces of rural marginality. To unpack the historical causes behind this...

This paper examines the relationships between ethnicity and end-use energy injustices in the United Kingdom, focusing on the drivers and experiences of fuel poverty and energy vulnerability among ethnic minorities. In response to a systematic lack of research, evidence and debate, we use evidence from a combination of sources: online open-ended int...

In this paper, we study the policies that regulated the energy mix in the Polish residential sector between 1990 and 2021. We apply a qualitative assessment of policies and difference-in-differences to evaluate the effects of particular regulations. We find that policymakers in Poland did not identify households as stakeholders in their strategies...

“Green deals” to promote socially inclusive decarbonisation have captured the imagination of public intellectuals and advocates across the political spectrum. Such programmes are often premised upon the concept of “just transitions”, which aims to reconcile environmental and social concerns in the movement towards a low‐carbon future. I respond to...

Metabolisms of energy in society and space are predicated upon human labour, in ways that are often poorly recognized in relation to the global climate challenge. I synthesize and interrogate existing scholarship on the relationship between energy and labour across different spatio-temporal contexts, so as to reveal the overlapping networks that bi...

This report provides a global synthesis of evidence on justice in transitions to low-carbon energy systems and processes of urbanization. While cities are important sites of energy consumption, analysis of urbanisation offers explanations of how social and spatial injustices are created through the building, fuelling, feeding, and funding of cities...

In the ten years of Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions publishing, sustainability transitions have advanced in some domains, yet much remains to be done. For these transitions to grow, accelerate, and be socially accepted, our research needs to integrate an intentionally spatial whole systems justice approach that combines thinking f...

This paper makes the case that a lack of political and institutional recognition underpins the (re)production of domestic energy poverty. Previous research into the drivers of energy poverty has tended to focus on household-scale material and economic factors, with relatively little attention paid to the symbolic structures that act to legitimise d...

This paper examines the socio-economic and geopolitical outcomes associated with infrastructure development across multiple scales. Starting from the premise that planetary socio-technical transformations in this vein have distinctly national drivers, we focus on the urban agency of Chinese-led investment. The paper explores how different forms of...

This paper scrutinizes existing policy efforts to address energy poverty at the governance scale of the European Union (EU) and its constituent Member States. Our main starting point is the recent expansion of energy poverty policies at the EU level, fuelled by the regulatory provisions of the Clean Energy for all Europeans Package, as well as the...

Dr. Mari Martiskainen is a senior research fellow at Sussex Energy Group (SEG), Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), based at the University of Sussex. Martiskainen is also the theme lead for equity and justice at the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS), based at University of Oxford. She is an expert in energy policy and susta...

In the chapter, we discuss the key issue of how to envisage a just, fair and equitable energy transformation in the South African context. We argue that the move towards a new energy landscape cannot simply be described as a transition, but more accurately (in light of the need to involve multiple scales and actors, and to manage complex developmen...

This briefing highlights the groups of people that academic research has identified as vulnerable to experiencing fuel poverty and transport poverty. Fuel and transport poverty are distributed across the UK, although the groups affected in each place can vary and the characteristics can be different depending on the location and make up of househol...

Energy poverty is generally caused by having a low income, facing high energy costs, and living in a home with low energy efficiency. Various indicators capture these facets, but there is no consensus which is the best one, or how to combine them. To this aim, we create a multidimensional index that accounts for five dimensions of energy deprivatio...

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is heralded as the largest investment in infrastructure in history and is expected to re‐shape the geographies of urbanization in the coming decades. In this paper we review the burgeoning, yet still embryonic literature on the BRI. Our aim is to move beyond currently dominant framings of the BRI as a geopolit...

The implementation of energy efficiency improvement actions not only yields energy and greenhouse gas emission savings, but also leads to other multiple impacts such as air pollution reductions and subsequent health and eco-system effects, resource impacts, economic effects on labour markets, aggregate demand and energy prices or on energy security...

Energy poverty is a complex problem that is generally caused by having a low income, having high energy costs, and/or living in a home with low energy efficiency. Various indicators capture these factors, but there is no consensus among researchers on which is the best one, or on how to combine them. Thus, poverty mapping and policy planning would...

Improvements in energy efficiency have numerous impacts additional to energy and greenhouse gas savings. This paper presents key findings and policy recommendations of the COMBI project ("Calculating and Operationalising the Multiple Benefits of Energy Efficiency in Europe"). This project aimed at quantifying the energy and non-energy impacts that...

Conceptually, many energy poverty studies to date have been narrowly focused on inadequate indoor heating, paying little attention to other domestic energy services. Yet there are indications that a growing number of households in Europe are struggling to achieve adequate levels of indoor cooling, with adverse consequences for their health, well-be...

A household’s vulnerability to energy poverty is socially and spatially variable. Efforts to measure energy poverty, however, have focused on narrow, expenditure-based metrics or area-based targeting. These metrics are not spatial per se, because the relative importance of drivers does not vary between neighborhoods to reflect localized challenges....

The ‘resource nexus’ has emerged over the past decade as an important new paradigm of environmental governance, which emphasises the interconnections, tensions and synergies between sectors that have traditionally been managed separately. Nexus thinking presents itself as a radically new approach to integrated governance in response to interconnect...

Scale is an emergent theme in current scientific and policy debates on low‐carbon urban transformations. Yet notions of scale employed in such contexts are typically based on linear and hierarchical ontologies, and miss out on the long‐standing development of more nuanced conceptions of scale within Human Geography. This paper aims to advance a rel...

Cities in China have undergone considerable transformation in recent decades with unprecedented economic growth, rural to urban migration and a rapidly emerging middle class all contributing to increased energy consumption. In this context, we investigate the inability of urban households in the cold climate zone in northern China to access suffici...

This article focuses on the emergence of ‘low‐carbon’ gentrification as a distinct urban phenomenon, a process that we see as the outcome of efforts to change the social and spatial composition of urban districts under the pretext of responding to climate change and energy efficiency imperatives. The article develops a conceptual framework for scru...

This paper addresses the potential for urban change in relation to rapid transitions and the 1.5 °C target. Interventions to achieve rapid urban transformation are typically framed in technical and economic terms. This means that the social and political conditions for rapid urban transformations may be overlooked. We address this gap by highlighti...

The vulnerabilities that enhance the likelihood of a household falling into fuel poverty are increasingly recognised as highly multidimensional and geographical. However, the most established indicators used to measure fuel poverty are primarily based upon expenditure. This paper seeks to understand to what extent expenditure-based indicators succe...

Energy poverty can be understood as the inability to secure a socially- and materially-necessitated level of energy services in the home. This article presents the results of empirical research on energy poverty in Bytom. The study was carried out using a questionnaire delivered to 121 persons living in Bytom. The questionnaire consisted of 20 sing...

This chapter summarizes the key findings of the book in the context of its purpose and frameworks, while recommending possible avenues for future research and policy.

This chapter outlines past and current definitional issues at the nexus of energy poverty, energy vulnerability, energy justice and energy transitions. It traces the historical development of scientific understandings centring on these topics, while exploring their interactions and interdependencies. The chapter starts from the multiple definitiona...

This chapter reviews the spatial and social differences that underpin existing and past patterns of energy poverty in Europe. This is achieved via exploration of scientific research focused on the topic, either as a central object of enquiry or as part of wider investigations in which the issue is brought up as a relevant factor. Special attention...

This chapter explores the historical evolution and present content of a common European Union (EU) energy poverty agenda. It identifies the principal institutional and political drivers of this process, as well as the ways in which it has been translated into formal legal and policy documents. Also discussed are the key actors involved in promoting...

This chapter introduces the political and scientific context in which the book is situated. It defines the terms ‘energy poverty’ and ‘infrastructural divide’ while discussing the purpose and structure of the book. The book’s central aim is the consolidation and development of debates on European and global energy poverty, by exploring the politica...

This open access book aims to consolidate and advance debates on European and global energy poverty by exploring the political and infrastructural drivers and implications of the condition across a variety of spatial scales. It highlights the need for a geographical conceptualization of the different ways in which household-level energy deprivation...

Geographers are increasingly engaging with the driving forces and implications of energy poverty—a specific but relatively unknown form of material deprivation that emerges at the nexus of sociodemographic inequalities and built formations. In this article, we argue that an improved understanding of the urban embeddedness of energy poverty can prov...

Recognition of the negative impacts of fuel poverty, a lack of sufficient energy services in the home, has generated considerable interest in how the phenomenon can best be measured. Subsequently, the most well-known indicators deployed in policy-making, the established 10% indicator and the recent Low Income High Cost (LIHC) indicator, have genera...

In England, policy-makers have sought to measure energy poverty using two indicators, formerly a 10% indicator and more recently a Low Income High Cost indicator (LIHC). We interrogate the spatial distribution of energy poor households according to each indicator using a vulnerability framing. Our analysis demonstrates that each indicator succeeds...

This policy brief outlines some of EVALUATE's initial findings on the causes and consequences of energy poverty based on the lived experiences of households. The results are drawn from in-depth and longitudinal qualitative research with 111 households from Gdańsk (Poland), Prague (Czechia), Budapest (Hungary) and Skopje (Macedonia), conducted in th...

Human health and well being are closely intertwined with the ability to access affordable and modern domestic energy services, including heating, cooling, lighting, cooking, and information technology. Energy poverty is said to occur when such amenities cannot be secured up to a socially- and physically- necessitated level. Millions of people acros...

Energy efficiency improvements have numerous benefits/im- pacts additional to energy and greenhouse gas savings, as has been shown and analysed e.g. in the 2014 IEA Report on “Mul- tipleBenefitsofEnergyEfficiency”.ThispaperpresentstheHo- rizon 2020-project COMBI (“Calculating and Operationalising the Multiple Benefits of Energy Efficiency in Europe...

Despite growing pan-European interest in and awareness of the wide-ranging health and well-being impacts of energy poverty—which is characterised by an inability to secure adequate levels of energy services in the home—the knowledge base is largely British-centric and dominated by single-country studies. In response, this paper investigates the rel...

This paper introduces the concept of spatial justice and inequality to understandings of energy poverty and vulnerability. By applying an explicitly spatial lens to conceptualize energy poverty as a form of injustice, it contributes to debates in the domain of ‘energy justice’, where previous examinations of energy deprivation through a justice fra...

Energy poverty – which has also been recognised via terms such as ‘fuel poverty’ and ‘energy vulnerability’ – occurs when a household experiences inadequate levels of energy services in the home. Measuring energy poverty is challenging, as it is a culturally sensitive and private condition, which is temporally and spatially dynamic. This is compoun...

The on-going transition towards low-carbon forms of energy provision (frequently termed ‘energy transitions’) has triggered far-reaching material, economic and institutional reconfigurations at the global scale. There is evidence to suggest that energy transitions increase the social vulnerability of actors involved in and affected by them, includi...

Academics and policy-makers alike are becoming increasingly interested in the wider societal implications of situations where a lack of domestic ‘energy services’ is systemic and pervasive. Energy services are commonly understood as the ‘benefits that energy carriers produce for human well being’ (Modi et al., 2005, page 9). Social science research...

Until recently, the suggestion that significant parts of the population may be suffering from a distinctive form of poverty due to being unable to access adequate energy services in the home was a non-issue among politicians and academics in much of the European Union. The United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland were the only two EU states where...

This paper uses the experience of post-socialist district heating reforms to tell a broader story about the continued and shared challenges that central and eastern European cities face as they grapple with the legacies of the recent and more distant past. We argue that the restructuring of this infrastructural domain has been contingent upon geogr...

Falling real incomes, rising utility prices and the historically poor thermal quality of the housing stock are some of the main factors that have driven the rise of systemic injustices surrounding energy poverty in the post-communist states of Eastern and Central Europe (ECE). We undertake a socio-spatial and temporal assessment of energy poverty i...

Homes in multiple occupancy (HMOs) – residential properties containing common areas shared by several households – are a growing feature of the housing landscape across the UK. They have often been subject to political stigmatization as a result, in part, of comprising poor quality dwellings. This paper uses a “spaces of exception” framework to exp...

Housing in Multiple Occupancy (HMO) includes some of the UK's worst housing stock. The tenants typically have reduced housing and social security rights, as well as reduced control and sometimes absence of basic domestic energy services. Yet, HMO is largely absent from UK policies governing energy efficiency and fuel poverty. Energy vulnerability i...

This paper responds to the need for a greater integration of energy and environment themes in the higher education curriculum. We explore the practical implications of empowering students towards the implementation of individual action research projects focused on investigating and addressing insufficient or wasteful energy consumption among househ...

The European Horizon 2020-project COMBI ("Calculating and Operationalising the Multiple Benefits of Energy Efficiency in Europe") aims at estimating the energy and non-energy impacts that a realisation of the EU energy efficiency potential would have in the year 2030. The project goal is to cover the most important technical potentials identified f...

Despite earlier expectations that globalization would eradicate the need for geographical space and distance, ‘maps matter’ today in ways that were unimaginable a mere two decades ago. In contrast to the traditional ‘topographic’ perspective, the territorial extent of economic and political realms is being increasingly conceived though a ‘topologic...

Despite earlier expectations that globalization would eradicate the need for geographical space and distance, ‘maps matter’ today in ways that were unimaginable a mere two decades ago. In contrast to the traditional ‘topographic’ perspective, the territorial extent of economic and political realms is being increasingly conceived though a ‘topologic...

Energy poverty can be understood as the inability of a household to secure a socially and materially necessitated level of energy services in the home. While the condition is widespread across Europe, its spatial and social distribution is highly uneven. In this paper, the existence of a geographical energy poverty divide in the European Union (EU)...

This paper focuses on the embeddedness of energy poverty – understood as the inability to secure a socially and materially necessitated level of energy services in the home – in the socio-technical legacies inherited from past development trajectories, as well as broader economic and institutional landscapes. Using Hungary as an example, we explore...

Recent political and military events in Ukraine have brought into sharp focus concerns over the security of European gas supplies from Russia. At the same time, the creation of an infrastructural and political ‘energy union’ has become a key stated priority for the governing bodies of the European Union. Both contingencies have highlighted the 28-n...

This paper offers an integrated conceptual framework for the research and amelioration of energy deprivation in the home. It starts from the premise that all forms of energy and fuel poverty - in developed and developing countries alike - are underpinned by a common condition: the inability to attain a socially and materially necessitated level of...

This chapter explores the organisational and political complexities surrounding the adoption of energy poverty agendas and policies at the EU decisionmaking level. Theoretically, it is based on the literature on policy mobilities. Empirically, it engages in a triangulation of data from the secondary literature and interviews in various EU instituti...

This paper reports the results of recent conceptual and empirical work on energy poverty in Europe, undertaken under the auspices of the European Research Council-funded EVALUATE (‘Energy Vulnerability and Urban Transitions in Europe’) project. Our group understands energy poverty as the inability of a household to secure a socially- and materially...