Page - 154 - in Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies - Conference Proceedings of the 17th STS Conference Graz 2018

Is energy efficiency the panacea for energy poverty? – Evidence from Austria and Macedonia STOJILOVSKA, Ana Central European University, Budapest Introduction In the light of EU’s decarbonization endeavors, the key instruments to enforce these low-carbon policies are renewable energy and energy efficiency. Undoubtedly this grand transition requires changes in many aspects, such as at socio-economic, technological, and societal level. Households are one of the key actors to play part in this transition; however there is a general concern that the energy transition will leave out energy poor households, the latter defined as being unable to satisfy their energy needs (Scarpellini et al. 2015). Energy efficiency has been generally considered as the ultimate measure to address energy poverty (Boardman 2010; Thomson and Snell 2013; Tirado Herrero and Ürge-Vorsatz 2012). The logic is that households affected by energy poverty should be able to have financial savings after installing energy efficiency measures since these measures will reduce the energy demand. However, investment in energy efficiency is considered expensive (Healy and Clinch 2004; Tirado Herrero and Ürge-Vorsatz 2012) and often out of reach for affected households (Boardman 2010; Bouzarovski et al. 2012; Fahmy et al. 2011), especially that the economizing strategies of energy poor are under-researched. The literature on energy poverty in Macedonia and Austria is limited. In Macedonia half of the households suffers from energy deprivation (Buzar 2007). Energy poverty is not a problem of lower-class, but of middle-class as well (Buzar 2007). The coping strategies of households which are energy poor and/or poor/ at risk of poverty in Vienna were analyzed showing that these households use different strategies to cope with the restriction to satisfying their basic needs (Brunner et al. 2012). The paper includes a comparative case study with focus on Macedonia and Austria and combines both qualitative and quantitative methods. The empirical data consists of 54 interviews with stakeholders from both countries, 219 interviews with households from both countries mostly collected via an online platform, 300 phone surveys in Vienna and Skopje, 150 1per city from both countries. For both types of interviews, purposive sampling was used, while the surveys were collected by randomly selecting households in the capital cities. Important is to note that when collecting data from households, not only energy poor, but also non-energy poor households were surveyed or interviewed. Macedonia, a Western Balkan country, and Austria, a Central European country, have different historic legacies, whereas Macedonia belongs to the list of former socialist countries. Macedonia is still a developing country, unlike Austria which is a developed one. The aim of this paper is test whether energy efficiency is the most effective measure to address energy poverty in Austria and Macedonia, countries with different levels of living standard and social and energy systems. 154