Center for Energy Studies

17/01/2024

‼️ Internship alert ‼️

Energy poverty policy assistant at Feantsa - Working Together to End Homelessness in Europe in Brussels. See details from the link below.

02/11/2023

The annual Central European Energy Conference by the Slovak Foreign Policy Association in Bratislava is here again. Held on November 20-21, the respected event will once again host politicians, analysts, academics, and energy practitioners.

Registrations are open at

The purpose of the annual Central European Energy Conference (CEEC) is to discuss and assess topical issues relating to energy security and climate policy in Central Europe in the context of EU policy development and implementation. The CEEC conference has two ambitions: first, to bring together lea...

14/09/2023

Researching Energy Vulnerability at the FSS Continues!

Hedvika Koďousková and Jan Osička succeeded in the TAČR Sigma competition. Their project "Causes and Prevention of Energy Vulnerability" was ranked 29th out of 379 proposals. In the first phase, the project foresees further work with the "Energy Vulnerability Index" in cooperation with the Ministry of Regional Development as the project guarantor.

08/09/2023

Hedvika Koďousková presented at the ECPR

At the ECPR conference in Prague, Hedvika was one of the presenters on a panel titled "Policies to alleviate energy poverty in times of crisis”. Her paper, "Perspectives on energy poverty from Czech subnational officials: experienced but not yet heard," explored the municipal domain's significance in energy poverty research and governance.

10/07/2023

☺️🎊🤞

Our 11th summer school on energy security has started! 🙌🎉

In the next two weeks, 23 students from 9 different countries will learn about energy policy and security issues of European countries and challenges they are facing in these turbulent times.

15/06/2023

...and that´s a wrap!

New graduates of our Energy Policy Studies Master´s degree program!

Our sincere congratulations, guys! You did a great job! Enjoy the great feeling! 🍾🥳🎉

17/05/2023

This paper considers the planned transformation of the district heating sector as an opportunity to protect households from energy poverty, while also…

11/07/2022

Energy security summer school commenced

On Monday, the 10th year of the energy security summer school commenced at the Faculty of Social Studies. Titled "Energy in Europe: Principles, Challenges, Paths Forward" and organized by the Department of International Relations and European Studies in tight cooperation with the MU's Centre for International Cooperation, the summer school aims to unveil principles of Europan energy policy and its mechanisms, and key security issues and challenges the EU energy policy stands in front of. These include rapid transition to renewable energy, skyrocketing prices of electricity and natural gas, reliance on oil imports from authoritarian and openly hostile regimes, local opposition to new energy installations, increasing energy poverty, or looming impoverishment of once proud coal regions.

11/07/2022

Jirusek on EU´s plan to get rid of Russian gas and Russia´s pivot to Asia

Martin Jirusek published an opinion paper with the PONARS Eurasia institute (https://www.facebook.com/PONARSEurasia) at the George Washington University (https://www.facebook.com/georgewashingtonuniversity) on the EU´s effort to shake off dependency on Russian gas and Russian pivot to Asia.

Martin posits that the EU´s recently introduced REPower EU plan provides a good framework for a short- to mid-term outlook but the long-term horizon is unclear. Russia, on the other hand, is set to face even bigger challenges in the effort to find alternative buyers for its vast gas reserves.

Read the article on the link here:

In mid-May, the European Commission introduced its “REPowerEU” plan, a response to recent developments in regional and global energy markets and, mainly, disruptions caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is remarkable that the Commission so openly named Russia as the main issue and drive...

27/06/2022

Happy to announce the article of Hedvika Koďousková and Dominik Bořuta "Energy poverty in Slovakia: Officially defined, but misrepresented in major policies" has been just published in Energy Policy journal in its on-line form. For a limited period of time, it is now freely accessible on this link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1fIdr14YGgloK2

The paper builds on the energy justice perspective and a spatially sensitive evaluation to critically analyze Slovak policies, directly and indirectly, tackling energy poverty. Slovakia is one of the few countries with an official definition. Nevertheless, it is listed among the ten most lagging EU Member States in terms of progress in alleviating energy poverty. There are also concerns about the fairness of measures to combat it. Do the policies reflect the three fundamental pillars of energy justice? And, given the issue's uneven socio-spatial occurrence in the country, are these policies designed and implemented to reduce pre-existing inequalities? The paper reveals that the multidimensional nature and specificities of energy poverty in Slovakia remain misrecognized in major policies. There are shortcomings in the policies' distributional and participatory aspects. Most importantly, social welfare benefits are hard to access for energy-poor households, as are energy efficiency support schemes. Though some policies address dimensions linked to the issue, they do not tackle energy poverty's uneven incidence. The article concludes by pointing to their untapped potential in solving the problem.