When past meets present: A mixed-methods study of heating practices in Sweden during the energy crisis

During the energy crisis in 2022/2023, households across Europe were encouraged to reduce their energy use to contribute to energy sufficiency, sovereignty, and solidarity. This paper explores energy saving heating practices among Swedish single-family households during the energy crisis in 2022. The Energy Cultures Framework is used to investigate how material culture and norms affect practices for energy sufficiency, here explored as having a partly heated dwelling, and indicators of energy vulnerability, here explored as limiting heating to the extent of feeling cold. A mixed-methods approach was adopted in an Explanatory Sequential Design using over 900 survey responses from the fall of 2022 and 44 oral histories collected during the winters of 2023 and 2024 to gain a comprehensive understanding of how households' past and present influence heating practices. It was found that heating system affects both heating practices, showing how electric heating caused sufficiency as well as vulnerability among households during the energy crisis. It was also found that factors related to upbringing affected the practice of having a partly heated dwelling, whereas factors related to individual characteristics primarily correlated with limiting heating to the extent of feeling cold, where women and people with poorer health were more likely to feel cold. Built on a rigorous empirical material, the findings of this study can help promote more just policy measures that account for the various ways, affected by both past and present, in which heating reductions are unevenly available as well as tolerable for different households.