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Encountering energy precarity: Geographies of fuel poverty among young adults in the UK.

Saska Petrova
Published in: Transactions (Institute of British Geographers : 1965) (2017)
This paper develops the notion of "energy precarity" in order to uncover the governance practices and material conditions that drive and reproduce the inability of households to secure socially- and materially-necessitated levels of energy services in the home. The overarching aim is to foreground a geographical approach towards the study of domestic energy deprivation, by emphasizing the complex socio-spatial and material embeddedness of fuel poverty. The paper operationalizes these ideas via a field-based study of a group that has received limited attention in research and policy on fuel poverty: young adults living in privately rented accommodation. In evoking the experiences of such individuals, I employ energy precarity as a means of unpacking the spaces where energy deprivation is produced, experienced and contested. Among other findings, I highlight that people's fluid lifestyles and specific end-use energy demand patterns mean that energy deprivation metaphorically and physically overflows the limits of home, creating multiple performativities of precarity that have received very little attention to date.
Keyphrases
  • young adults
  • healthcare
  • mental health
  • primary care
  • working memory