A comparative socio-technical analysis investigating home heating transitions in Finland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom reveals that decarbonisation pathways across Europe are deeply structured by infrastructural lock-in, governance models, and historical welfare regimes rather than individual household choices. Heating presents a central challenge to European climate goals, with space and water heating accounting for nearly half of building energy consumption and generating approximately 38 percent of carbon emissions across the European Union. Furthermore, nearly two-thirds of heating demand continues to rely directly on fossil fuels. By evaluating historical trajectories and contemporary configurations through a combined framework of energy democracy, energy citizenship, and energy justice, the study demonstrates that universal policy framings promoting active consumer participation frequently fail to reflect the structural realities governing domestic heating systems.

The investigation was conducted by an international research team, including Jenny Palm, Aimee Ambrose, Kathy Davies, Sarah Kilpeläinen, Jenny von Platten, George Jiglau, Sofie Pelsmakers, Raúl Castaño-Rosa, and Anca Sinea, within the JustHeat project. The researchers examined how major transformations in home heating technologies over the last seventy years have influenced domestic routines, cultural expectations of thermal comfort, and social vulnerabilities. To trace these transformations, the authors analysed extensive archives, parliamentary committee reports, national strategy records, media publications, and secondary academic literature spanning from the mid-twentieth century through 2025 across all four nations. Rather than conducting field experiments or presenting isolated case studies, the team synthesised documentary evidence chronologically and thematically to execute a parallel demonstration of theory.

To evaluate the empirical material systematically, the authors introduced an integrated triangular framework uniting three established conceptual lenses that have gained prominence in energy research since the 2010s. Within this framework, energy democracy addresses ownership and decision-making structures, asking who controls and governs the means of heat production and distribution. Energy citizenship investigates everyday household practices and practical participation, exploring how domestic routines, fuel choices, and system interactions either strengthen or constrain citizen capabilities. Energy justice examines equity, assessing who bears the economic burdens and vulnerabilities of transitions across distributive, procedural, and recognition dimensions. The authors noted that while European Union frameworks such as the Clean Energy Package presume citizens will function as proactive, rational prosumers, national realities diverge markedly based on established infrastructure.

The empirical findings reveal stark contrasts in ownership and governance across the four selected jurisdictions. In Sweden and Finland, heating relies heavily on centralised district heating networks operated primarily by municipal or state-owned entities, with private firms maintaining a secondary presence. In Sweden, district systems supply 90 percent of heat demand in multifamily buildings and 17 percent in detached homes, while in Finland district heating supplies 45 percent of total heating demand. These municipal arrangements secure stable provision and local institutional accountability within broader welfare structures, yet they operate as natural monopolies where households cannot choose between competing suppliers. Direct consumer agency remains constrained to opting out entirely, such as through installing independent heat pumps, rather than actively shaping utility operation.

In contrast to the Nordic municipal model, Romania and the United Kingdom exhibit distinct structural paths marked by state withdrawal and private market organisation. In Romania, post-socialist economic transitions led to the widespread deterioration of Soviet-era centralized district heating networks, causing over 260 district heating facilities to shut down within a single decade. Today, only approximately 1.1 million households out of roughly 7 million remain connected to district networks, concentrated predominantly in Bucharest, leaving the majority of the population reliant on individual gas boilers or wood-burning stoves. In the United Kingdom, where nationalised gas networks established in the 1960s were subsequently privatised, liberalised retail markets have left 74 percent of households dependent on individual gas boilers supplied by 22 competing utility companies, while district heating meets less than 2 percent of heat demand.

Analysis of everyday practices under the energy citizenship lens showed that citizen interaction with heating systems is largely dictated by physical infrastructure rather than voluntary engagement. In Sweden, district heating operates largely as an invisible service for households, particularly under warm rent contracts where heating costs are integrated into housing rents and occupants simply adjust radiator valves without tracking real-time expenditures. In Finland, recent exposure to volatile spot-price electricity contracts heightened public awareness of heating consumption, spurring demand-response initiatives such as the Astetta Alemmas campaign, which encouraged households to lower indoor temperatures by one degree and utilise hybrid heating configurations where technically feasible.

Everyday practices in Romania and the United Kingdom reflect survival mechanisms and autonomy-seeking responses to systemic instability and cost inflation. In rural Romania, widespread dependence on wood heating demands intensive manual labour, including stove management, fuel procurement, and navigation of informal timber markets. In the United Kingdom, widespread deployment of smart meters has heightened awareness of operational costs, prompting households to restrict heating to specific rooms or maintain indoor temperatures between 16 and 19 degrees Celsius solely to limit household bills.

The evaluation of energy justice demonstrated that social vulnerabilities are distributed unequally and exacerbated by differing policy approaches across Europe. In the United Kingdom, where fuel poverty has been officially recognised since the 1970s, fuel poverty rates have increased to record levels, affecting approximately 20 percent of households after remaining near 10 percent for decades. This vulnerability disproportionately impacts single parents, ethnic minority households, private renters, and individuals subjected to mandatory pre-payment meter installations, with elderly populations increasingly exposed following reductions in state heating support. While social housing residents often benefit from higher structural insulation standards, low-income owner-occupiers and private tenants face prohibitive capital costs that prevent them from accessing government subsidies for low-carbon technologies like heat pumps.

In Romania, state policy conceptualises energy poverty predominantly as a temporary household income shortfall, providing financial heating allowances during price spikes while failing to address structural housing deficiencies, grid absence, and inefficient wood combustion in rural settlements. In Finland and Sweden, robust social safety nets historically kept energy poverty off the central political agenda, but recent energy price shocks have introduced new distributive strains. Swedish debates have highlighted disparities under cold rent arrangements in poorly insulated rental properties, hidden energy poverty among tenants in underheated warm rent dwellings who lack operational recourse, and unassisted costs for low-income detached homeowners.

The authors concluded that effective decarbonisation policies cannot rely on uniform, continent-wide assumptions of citizen empowerment that overlook infrastructural lock-in and historical context. The study establishes that sustainable transitions require targeted policy adjustments: deepening democratic oversight within Nordic collective networks through cooperative mechanisms, establishing stringent price regulations and robust welfare protections within liberalised market systems like the United Kingdom, and directing capital investments toward infrastructure restoration and local governance in post-socialist environments such as Romania. Ultimately, the researchers emphasised that achieving a just transition requires policy frameworks to evaluate technical efficiency alongside everyday social routines, institutional accountability, and structural equity.

The investigation drew upon targeted national documentary archives analyzed through qualitative coding. In Sweden, the empirical dataset encompassed 27 government energy and housing reports from parliamentary archives and 169 historical newspaper articles. The Finnish analysis reviewed 15 parliamentary committee reports alongside policy papers and reporting from Helsingin Sanomat and YLE. United Kingdom documentation included parliamentary debates, press coverage across the political spectrum, energy industry papers, and records from the National Union of Mineworkers. For Romania, materials included national energy strategy papers, the National Integrated Plan for Energy and Climate, and findings from the Romanian Energy Poverty Observatory. By evaluating these diverse documentary collections, the authors applied comparative case study logic, utilizing contrasting national contexts to enable theoretical generalisation.

Theoretically, the authors connected their framework to socio-technical transitions theory, which often prioritises technological niche innovations and regime shifts while overlooking the social depth of systemic change. Globally, space heating and domestic hot water represent fundamental energy services needed by approximately 40 percent of households. Although transitions can yield substantial benefits such as reduced expenditures and enhanced indoor air quality, the authors stressed that substantive equality demands positive discrimination to safeguard marginalized groups. These populations include tenants, people experiencing digital exclusion, and individuals managing health vulnerabilities.

Finally, the researchers emphasised that translating European Green Deal goals into effective practice requires tailoring policies to infrastructural realities rather than relying on abstract consumer empowerment. Although the United Kingdom has exited the European Union, its policy trajectory remains aligned with continental decarbonisation efforts and shares similar structural challenges. In collective Nordic systems, the authors recommended expanding energy democracy through cooperative ownership or direct citizen representation within municipal utilities, rather than expecting behavioral shifts toward invisible networks. In liberalised environments, regulators must replace disciplinary practices like forced pre-payment meter installations with robust affordability safeguards and accessible subsidies. Without integrating governance, everyday routines, and social justice, technical decarbonisation measures risk remaining socially unsustainable.

Subject of Research: Comparative analysis of home heating transitions across four European nations

Article Title: Home heating transition in Finland, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom through the combined lens of energy democracy, energy citizenship and energy justice

Article References: Palm, J., Ambrose, A., Davies, K., Kilpeläinen, S., von Platten, J., Jiglau, G., Pelsmakers, S., Castaño-Rosa, R., & Sinea, A. (2026). Home heating transition in Finland, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom through the combined lens of energy democracy, energy citizenship and energy justice. Energy, Sustainability and Society, 16(1), Article 31. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13705-026-00587-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s13705-026-00587-7

Keywords: heating transitions, energy democracy, energy citizenship, energy justice, district heating, decarbonisation, fuel poverty, European energy policy, Home, heating, transition, Finland