Greece has the highest poverty risk rate in Europe, with approximately one quarter of the total population falling under this category (ELSTAT 2013). One of the lesser-publicised dimensions of the recent crisis in this country has been the rapid expansion of energy poverty, which is commonly seen as the inability of a household to secure a lack of socially and materially-necessitated level of energy services in the home. This paper explores the manner in which experiences of energy poverty in Greece are underpinned by the social and spatial infrastructures of everyday life. More specifically, it investigates the seasonal and diurnal features of energy poverty in urban and peri-urban areas. Empirical evidence was gathered with the aid of ethnographic research in the Thessaloniki area, Northern Greece. In total 25 households were included in the study. Preliminary results from the 2013 summer cooling season and the 2014 winter heating season are presented. The results of the study point to the varying experiences of energy vulnerability among households living in different parts of the city and its surroundings, despite the widespread presence of energy vulnerability. Patterns of domestic energy deprivation are more conspicuous in peri-urban areas, in both social and infrastructural terms: due to the close proximity of social ties in the case of former, and the physical visibility of newly-installed wood-burning chimneys and the storage of fuelwood outside people’s homes in the case of the latter. This often creates anxieties surrounding the possibility of stigmatization and exclusion. Members of urban households find themselves pushed into a lack of adequate domestic energy services due to the inclusion of various new taxes in the electricity bill, the inefficient built fabric, non-flexible heating systems and high petroleum prices.

1. Energy poverty in Northern Greece:
Experiencing and contesting deprivation in conditions of crisis
Saska Petrova
University of Manchester

2. Context
• The dismantling of traditional forms of energy provision (Nye 1996) as a result of
austerity policies opens the space for non-market and informal economic strategies
(Gibson-Graham 1996)
• (Re)emergence of a communal ethos and various neighbourhood ‘experiments’
(Anastasopoulos 2013)
- How do spaces of informality and austerity help address poverty and social
exclusion, while sustaining the rhythms of urban everyday life?
• Informal practices understood as ways of challenging and contesting the political,
economic and spatial regimes associated with austerity policies

3. Case study: Greece
EVENT - Energy Vulnerability and Alternative Economies in Northern Greece
funded by RGS-IBG, UK
From economic to humanitarian crisis
Electricity cuts and blackouts

4. Greece has the highest poverty risk rate in Europe, with approximately one quarter of the total population
falling under this category (ELSTAT 2013).
The collapse of universal energy provision in this country has brought into light the complex technical, social
and economic relations involved in sustaining the modern ʻtechnological sublimeʼ

5. Why Thessaloniki?

6. Relatively
colder winter
temperatures
compared to
other major
urban areas in
the country

7. Evidence of
diverse
economies

8. Field research undertaken in 2013 and 2014 under the EVENT (Energy Vulnerability in Northern
Greece) project
Two sets of interviews and ‘energy diaries’ with 25 households, including 77 people in
Thessaloniki
Analysis of documentary evidence, 10 decision-maker interviews

9. 9 households
2 households
1 household
13 households

10. Widespread
presence of energy
poverty within
urban and peri-
urban areas

11. Energy poverty beyond
heating/cooling:
Lighting deprivation as a social
and cultural signifier
I am afraid that people my age
have lost their social identity as a
result of having to deal with the
crisis’ (Maria, 55 year old,
unemployed)
I have to keep most of my house
in the dark…but I do not feel
comfortable having my
grandchildren in a dark house
(Spiros, 70 years old, pensioner)

12. Not only cold, but humid too…

13. Fuel switching, multiple
carriers and energy
poverty:
Lighting as a coping
strategy
Our family spends a lot of
time around the σομπα, it
is warm, cosy and we use
it to make coffee … we
appreciate the light that it
gives off (Marika, 60 years
old, unemployed)

14. Reshaping of
everyday practices
‘We decided to use
the water heater at
specific times when
we can all take a bath
around the same time
and do house chores.’
(52 year old man,
travel agent)

15. ‘If things get worse in the
future I will go back to
my village to live.’ (55
year old man, part time
accountant)
‘We stay in our flat
during the week and on
the weekends we go to
our villages.’ (37 year old
woman, secretary)
Utilizing land assets: the ‘new peasants’

16. Community resources:
The beating heart of
alternative economies
‘I would not be able to afford a
place on my own. I am only posh
when I am together with my
partner.’
(37 year old woman, secretary)
‘Sometimes I go over to a
friend’s house to warm up.’
(52 year old woman,
homemaker)
‘We were planning to move to a
better apartment, but our
current neighbours help us with
our children.’
(35 year old man, ambulance
driver)

17. Discourses of crisis: the
fear of blackouts
I am scared of
power cuts…
Without hot
water and
lighting our
business is
ruined
(Alexandra, 47
years old, B&B
owner)

18. • Energy poverty widespread in the case study area and closely contingent upon
everyday spaces of informality
• The lack of energy service provision alters the patterns of energy demand and
creates alternative territories and spaces of resource consumption
• Lighting is an integral part of the rise of energy poverty and an instrument of
austerity. Needs and practices surrounding lighting are used as a tool for the
construction of crisis and as a mechanism for controlling vulnerable groups
• The ability to switch to different carriers offers opportunities for resistance and
resilience
• The intensification of collective agencies goes hand in hand with the rise of diverse
economies and new locally embedded practices
Concluding thoughts

19. http://urban-energy.org
@curemanchester
Thank you!