Coming in from the cold: The challenge of providing affordable comfort in Central and Eastern Europe

Panel: Panel 4: Human Dimensions

Author:
Lee J. Schipper, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

Abstract

Rapid economic reform in most sectors of Central and Eastern European economies has had a profound impact on energy use there. While energy use in some sectors is changing rapidly with economic restructuring, that for housing has changed only slowly once the shocks of higher prices or cutbacks in supply worked through to individual households. Financial pressures on both households and the state, local, and private entitiesthat buy and distribute fuels, and/or health and environmental costs associated with using solid fuels (including shale and peat) or high-sulfur residual oil, coupled with the possibility of a return to the cold winters that have been absent since 1988 make the matter of affordable comfort one of some urgency.

Comparison of space heating use in Central and Eastern Europe (CEU) today shows levels close to those in the U.S., Denmark, and other European countries in the early 1970s suggesting that important reductions in heating needs can be made even while increasing comfort and reducing costs. However, several fundamental problems confront the transition to a market-based system for energy use in the housing and commercial building sector: This paper shows that these problems, perhaps unique to the building sector, are related to classic market failures. very long adjustment times, limitations on building technologies and housing related institutions, and above all the vexing problems of families adjusting to difficult economic conditions.

Because every problem shares social, economic, and technical elements, approaching any of them from only one of these three perspectives will be difficult.