This document summarizes a study on energy poverty in post-communist Hungary. It finds that energy poverty rates have increased since the 1990s due to rising domestic energy prices and social safety net reductions. Over 20% of Hungary's population experienced energy poverty by the late 2000s. The study examines how energy poverty is embedded within Hungary's infrastructure systems and institutional changes. It also explores how energy poverty shapes political debates and how households cope through strategies like delayed payments, fuel switching, and reducing energy use. The researchers conclude that energy vulnerability is a pervasive issue in Hungary that emerges from both socio-technical legacies and post-1990 restructuring, and has complex interactions with climate policy goals.

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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)

6. 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

7. 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

8. Pre-fab ‘panel’ blocks with DH
[Csepel, district XXI Budapest]
Lack of individual
metering and T control
Relatively inefficient
buildings (230
kWh/m2.year)
Inability to disconnect
individual apartments
Non-payment as a
coping strategy
High energy costs per
sqm. / per person
Small size of
apartments (54 sqm.)
Households’
indebtedness
Lower investment on
upgrading or maintenance
of DH systems
Households
trapped in warm
apartments but
subject to high
energy costs
BUT… no cold housing-
related impacts:
UNCONVENTIONAL
CASE of fuel poverty
Large standing charges
(fixed costs of DH)
Not higher than
average FP rates
(expenditure approach)

9. An energy ‘affordability gap’
Purchasing
power gains
Domestic
energy
affordability
gap

10. The ‘price hike’ of natural gas

11. Changes in the structure of
household consumption

12. Disproportionate energy burdens

13. Self-reported indicators

14. Transformative practices:
coping strategies
• Highlights agency of vulnerable populations
• Delayed payment or non-payment
- Risk of indebtedness, disconnection and pre-
payment meters
• Fuel switching or ‘energy degradation’
- Firewood 2nd most common source of heat
- Rural, single family homes
- Correlation with low income

15. Use of solid fuels vs. income

16. Political resonances: price
regulations and subsidies
• First wave – mid 2000s
- Regulated price of natural gas and DH, reduced
VAT for DH
- Means-tested subsidies since 2007
• Second wave
- Across-the-board cuts in utility prices
- Political strategy to gain electoral support

17. Rezsiharc and rezsicsökkentés
Hungarian Parliamentary Elections 2014

19. Conclusions
• Energy poverty extends across social and
spatial strata
• Energy vulnerability as a pervasive feature
• Emerges at the nexus of socio-technical
legacies and post-1990 systemic
restructuring
• Politically reactive, populist policy response
• Complex interaction with climate policies

20. Thank you
urban-energy.org
@stiradoherrero
@stefanbuzar
@curemanchester