Empowering whose future? A European policy analysis of children in energy poverty

Children experience distinct impacts on their mental and physical health as well as their educational attainment as a result of living in energy poverty, according to multiple sources. International guidelines, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, underline the right of every child to an adequate standard of living and the need for all policies to consider the specific needs of children. This paper aims to understand the extent to which energy policies take explicit account of children in energy poverty and endeavour to address their distinct needs and the impacts they experience. The investigation is based on an analysis of EU-SILC data and policy documents across the 28 countries that (at the end of 2019) formed the European Union. The analysis reveals that children are mostly only considered within the wider family context, with larger families tending to receive greater support, despite evidence that single-parent families are at higher risk of energy poverty. Children are characterised as passive subjects in energy policy; their perspectives and needs are not considered in policy development

Spectral Transitions in Cyg X-1 and Other Black Hole X-Ray Binaries

We show that the model proposed by Esin, McClintock & Narayan (1997) for the low state, intermediate state and high state of the black hole soft X-ray transient, Nova Muscae 1991, is consistent with the spectral evolution of the black hole X-ray binary, Cyg X-1, during the hard-to-soft state transition observed in 1996. We also apply the model to the outbursts of two other black hole X-ray transients, GRO J0422+32 and GRO J1719-24.Comment: 41 pages, 9 ps figures included, AAS LaTeX, submitted to Ap

TThe ENCCA-WP7/EuroSarc/EEC/PROVABES/EURAMOS 3rd European Bone Sarcoma Networking Meeting/Joint Workshop of EU Bone Sarcoma Translational Research Networks; Vienna, Austria, September 24–25, 2015. Workshop Report

This report summarizes the results of the 3rd Joint ENCCA-WP7, EuroSarc, EEC, PROVABES, and EURAMOS European Bone Sarcoma Network Meeting, which was held at the Children's Cancer Research Institute in Vienna, Austria on September 24-25, 2015. The joint bone sarcoma network meetings bring together European bone sarcoma researchers to present and discuss current knowledge on bone sarcoma biology, genetics, immunology, as well as results from preclinical investigations and clinical trials, to generate novel hypotheses for collaborative biological and clinical investigations. The ultimate goal is to further improve therapy and outcome in patients with bone sarcomas

Energy poverty indicators: A critical review of methods

The widespread recognition of energy poverty as a distinct societal and policy challenge in the EU has resulted in a surge in the number and complexity of energy poverty metrics. Drawing from the body of white and grey literature on domestic energy deprivation indicators now available, the paper offers a review-based discussion on the risks of uncritically elaborating and reporting energy poverty statistics. It identifies key conceptual and methodological challenges including: the diversity of domestic energy services and household needs accounted for; the distinction between actual and required domestic energy expenditures; the setting of thresholds and energy poverty lines; the equivalisation of household incomes and energy expenditures; the consideration of housing costs; the stated, subjective character of responses to survey questionnaires; the measurement of the 'depth' of energy poverty; issues surrounding measurement units and weighted indices; and issues around the socio-demographic, spatial and temporal representativeness of data. Based on the reviewed evidence and author's experience, the paper argues against official, single-indicator energy poverty metrics like the UK's low income-high cost and advocates for multiple-indicator approaches that explicitly acknowledge the shortcomings of each of the methods implemented

The energy divide: Integrating energy transitions, regional inequalities and poverty trends in the European Union

Energy poverty can be understood as the inability of a household to secure a socially and materially necessitated level of energy services in the home. While the condition is widespread across Europe, its spatial and social distribution is highly uneven. In this paper, the existence of a geographical energy poverty divide in the European Union (EU) provides a starting point for conceptualizing and exploring the relationship between energy transitions - commonly described as wide-ranging processes of socio-technical change - and existing patterns of regional economic inequality. We have undertaken a comprehensive analysis of spatial and temporal trends in the national-scale patterns of energy poverty, as well as gas and electricity prices. The results of our work indicate that the classic economic development distinction between the core and periphery also holds true in the case of energy poverty, as the incidence of this phenomenon is significantly higher in Southern and Eastern European EU Member States. The paper thus aims to provide the building blocks for a novel theoretical integration of questions of path-dependency, uneven development and material deprivation in existing interpretations of energy transitions

Trapped in the heat: A post-communist type of fuel poverty

Fuel poverty is a still insufficiently researched social and energy challenge with significant climate change implications. Based on evidence from Hungarian panel apartment blocks connected to district heating, this paper introduces a new variant of fuel poverty that may not be properly captured by existing fuel poverty indicators. This newly defined variant can be largely attributed to post-communist legacies - though it might also exist in other contexts - and assumes that consumers living in poor-efficiency, district-heated buildings are trapped in dwellings with adequate indoor temperatures but disproportionately high heating costs because (a) changing supplier or fuel is difficult because of the existing technical and institutional constraints, and (b) they do not realistically have the option to reduce individually their heating costs through individual efficiency improvements. This situation often translates into payment arrears, indebtedness, risk of disconnection, or reduced consumption of other basic goods and services. State-supported policy responses to date have favoured symptomatic solutions (direct consumer support) combined with superficial retrofits, though it is argued that only state-of-the-art retrofits such as the passive house-based SOLANOVA pilot project in Dunaújváros can fully eradicate fuel poverty in this consumer group