Energy transition, energy crisis and household adaptation: socio-spatial inequalities and injustices
Abstract
Energy transition towards eliminating greenhouse gas emission is key to fighting climate change. Meanwhile, since 2021 a new energy crisis is unfolding, bringing an abrupt adaptation pressure on households, among others, due to increasing energy prices. In Hungary, an energy price limitation introduced in 2013-4 („utility price cut”) and a limited, disparately accessible and volatile system of energy efficiency and renewable energy subsidies framed households’ energy use until an abrupt energy price revision in Summer 2022. Based on representative survey data, the article analyses the socio-spatial disparities of Hungarian households’ energy use practices and problems, of the impact of the 2022 energy price revision, and of households’ adaptation strategies within this context, using the energy justice theoretical framework. It puts specific emphasis on the potential tension between adaptation strategies and sustainability. It points out that resource poor households were disproportionately more affected by adaptation pressure, many of whom could only resort to consumption limitation. Meanwhile more resourceful households were more likely to implement costly energy investments as a reaction to energy price increase, with additional life quality benefits. The analysis also shows that both resource poor, and more resourceful households featured adaptation methods potentially in tension with sustainability.
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