Energy poverty, a significant challenge to sustainable development, is the focus of this chapter. Delving into the causes of energy poverty in Bulgaria, it explores shifts in trade terms and energy supply conditions for households influenced by political decisions impacting energy infrastructure. The analysis covers various factors contributing to energy poverty in Bulgaria, emphasizing its manifestation during the transition from regulated to liberalized trade policies and integration into the EU's free energy market. The chapter aims to unravel Bulgaria's persistent energy poverty, unparalleled compared to other European countries, despite surplus energy production. By scrutinizing energy poverty levels, incomes, inequalities, prices, social protection, and household expenditures in Bulgaria versus other EU states; it seeks to understand the factors contributing to Bulgaria's disproportionately high energy poverty. This investigation sheds light on the underlying reasons, hindering the pursuit of equitable growth in living standards.
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Initiated by Bordman's work in 1991, the phenomenon of “energy poverty” has become a focal point for scholars, policymakers, energy experts, economists, and regulators. As highlighted by Jiglau et al. (2022), research on energy poverty evolves in three directions - conceptual, methodological, and political.
Energy poverty has become the subject of increasing research globally, given its significant impact on the standard of living, living conditions, and development opportunities in an energy-dependent world. This includes governance decisions, government measures, and the methods employed at local, national, and supranational levels. The approach to this phenomenon reflects the desired shift towards sustainability in economies and people's lifestyles. Energy poverty is also linked to issues of integration between states and energy security, which, beyond technical aspects, involve legal, political, and social dimensions. Bouzarovski (2019) published “Energy Poverty (Dis) Assembling Europe's Infrastructural Divide,” defining the primary goal of the research as “establishing how energy poverty is embedded in the broader system of infrastructural provision.” This aims to examine how energy poverty is intertwined with the wider system of infrastructure provisioning and institutional change, impacting both consumption structures and state policies governing energy flows.
The energy infrastructure, in a narrow sense, is a complex territorial system comprising enterprises, technical facilities, and complexes serving functions of energy production, processing, transmission, and transportation for the needs of the economy and households. In a broader sense, energy infrastructure includes terms of trade and the utilization or non-utilization of energy transmission infrastructure. Organizational structures, political decision-making at political and policy levels, influence energy infrastructure. (Сурнина at al. & Surnina at al., 2021, p.16). In this chapter energy policy and management related to energy are understood as elements of the energy infrastructure. Infrastructure is seen as a combination of socio-economic, political, and technical factors, aligning with Bouzarovski's perspective (Bouzarovski, 2019, p. 6). The energy policy and management play a crucial role in ensuring fairness in the operation of energy infrastructure, the standard of living, the competitiveness of the economy, and individual economic sectors. In accordance with European Union documents, Bulgaria's energy policy is expected to align with that of the European Union. Bulgaria's energy policy is not entirely autonomous, as it shares components with the European Union concerning the establishment of a unified European energy market and the European Green Deal, which aims to achieve climate neutrality. However, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union allows each member state to determine its own energy resource usage and, albeit not entirely, its energy supply.