Coping With the Cold: Heating Strategies for Eastern Europe and Central Asia's Urban Poor (World Bank Technical Paper)

Heating is a critical issue for people's livelihoods in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The region?s cold climate, the legacy of central planning, and the drop in household incomes over the last 10 years, strongly influence the design of heating strategies for the urban poor. Coping with the Cold discusses the interrelationships of heating, poverty alleviation, and environmental sustainability by providing new insights into how much energy people demandfor heating and how much they pay for it. The authors use household survey data from selected countries in the region in order to analyze household energy consumption and heating patterns. This book makes recommendations on how to design policies that will enable all people access to clean and affordable heating.