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The energy permacrisis: Challenging and reproducing the infrastructures of perpetual insecurity
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Abstract:
The recent ‘energy crisis’ has been linked to the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, a wider energy crisis has also been underway, in the form of ‘home energy injustices’ (Bouzarovski et al 2025) experienced by millions of people lacking access to adequate energy services across the world. In this presentation, I build upon Mona Harb’s (2025) notion of ‘crisis as infrastructure’ to explore how home energy injustices in Europe are enacted and perpetuated through conscious state policy choices and failures. Against the dominant apparatus of vulnerabilization, one finds an extensive, albeit largely unrecognized, counter-infrastructure of public advocacy and practitioner care, primarily led by the third sector. The interactions of the two systems exist in a paradoxical juxtaposition: efforts to tackle energy-related inequalities may help sustain the very frameworks that drive them. I discuss the internal workings of this contradiction, as well the ways in which it can be overcome.
Bio:
Stefan Bouzarovski is a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Manchester, where he directs the People, Place and Energy Research Centre. His research and policy interests focus on the relationships between energy transitions, social infrastructure and spatial inequality. He is a Co-Investigator of two large UK centres on these topics – the Energy Demand Research Centre (EDRC), and the Centre for Joined-Up Sustainability Transformations (JUST).