Seminar: “Energy poverty and the injustice of heat” by Ana Stojilovska

Title: “Energy poverty and the injustice of heat”

Speaker: Ana Stojilovska, Central European University

Date: Tuesday, January 15th 2019

Time: 12h

Venue: Room Z-022/Z-023 ICTA-UAB

The EU’s path towards low-carbon society needs to take an account of the social and technological aspects of energy transition in order to ensure that society as a whole can benefit from the intended transformation. Understanding the heat market is essential to uncovering the demand-side energy injustices, the particularities of energy poverty, the location of the energy poor, as well as the future challenges within the low-carbon energy transition processes. With fresh empirical research findings from two European countries with different political legacies, standards of living and levels of energy poverty, Austria and Macedonia, the talk will focus on novel findings about energy poor households’ priorities in regard to energy use, and how these are related to the type of heating.

Knowing that different heating options due their price, availability and other characteristics attract different profile of consumers, it has not been sufficiently researched what set of injustices do they impose? What are the distributive, recognition and procedural injustices per type of heating, considering both technologies and fuels? Why some energy price increase have prompted strong reaction from households in the form of street protests? Are certain heating systems more often chosen by energy poor consumers and/or do certain heating systems increase the risk of being in energy poverty? To which extend is the absence of heat infrastructure a factor in energy poverty patterns?  Energy poor households’ behavior and their heating systems play a central role in a more nuanced understanding of energy poverty. Are polluting fuels, technologies heating only certain part of the dwelling, and reliance on electric heating the main available options for affected households? Inability of the energy poor to actively participate in the EU-led energy transition by benefiting from access to modern, affordable and clean energy will have vast implications for the transition processes by increasing inequalities and energy end-user injustices. 

Bio

Ana Stojilovska is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University, Budapest. Her research is on synergies between energy poverty, energy justice and the type of heating by using Macedonia and Austria as case studies. She is interested in exploring energy poverty by directly studying the households’ energy-related decisions of both affected and not affected households. In terms of policies, she is interested in how energy poverty is related to climate vulnerability. Ana Stojilovska is currently a Visiting Teaching Fellow at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and a Visiting Fellow at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is also part of the working group on innovative approaches to understanding energy poverty as part of COST-funded ENGAGER project. Ana Stojilovska has previously worked in the civil society sector in Macedonia as an energy researcher at Analytica Think Tank, Skopje.