EEI SEMINAR: “Unfair transitions? Interrogating EU low-carbon transitions from a domestic energy vulnerability perspective” by Sergio Tirado

EEI SEMINAR: Unfair transitions? Interrogating EU low-carbon transitions from a domestic energy vulnerability perspective

Speaker: Sergio Tirado Herrero, ICTA-UAB researcher

Moderator: Tristan Partridge, ICTA-UAB researcher

Day: Wednesday, May 23rd 2018

Time: 12.30h

Room: Z/023

Wide disparities in domestic energy expenditures, income levels and access to energy carriers and household energy technologies exist across geographical scales and socio-economic groups. These result in energy poverty and inequality (i.e., uneven and inadequate levels of access to household energy services) rooted in household vulnerabilities, structural inefficiencies of the housing stock and injustices embedded in domestic energy provision systems. In parallel, low-carbon energy transitions are bringing about a fundamental reorganisation in the ways societies capture, distribute and use energy, and open the door for deeper transformations of economies and societies. In this process, disadvantaged, vulnerable social segments risk being excluded, penalised or ‘left behind’ in some way. 

Against this background, the seminar will present key results of a multi-year, multi-scalar empirical investigation of trends in domestic energy deprivation in the EU, with a focus on countries of Southern and Central and Eastern Europe and, at the city scale, on Barcelona. It will also introduces the speaker’s Marie Curie project TRANSFAIR that aims to conceptualise and empirically substantiate how low-carbon transitions may be reproducing or reinforcing domestic energy-related vulnerability and inequalities in the EU through two case study pathways – renewable electricity cooperatives in Spain and advanced thermal retrofits of multi-family buildings in Hungary. 

Bio

Dr Sergio Tirado Herrero is a Marie Curie Research Fellow of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) since March 2018. Prior to joining ICTA-UAB, Sergio has held various research, business development and project management positions in RMIT’s Center for Urban Research at RMIT Europe in Barcelona, the Centre for Urban Resilience and Energy (CURE) at the University of Manchester (UK), the Center for Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Policy (3CSEP) at Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), the University of Alcala (Madrid) and the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (Szentendre, Hungary). He is the lead author of the four high-impact reports on energy poverty in Spain and a contributing author of IAASA’s 2012 Global Energy Assessment.

Sergio holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences and Policy from Central European University (CEU) in Budapest and undergraduate degrees in Environmental Sciences (University of Alcalá, UAH) and in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Spain’s National Distance Education University, UNED).