Insulating Inequality: Limits of Housing Retrofit Subsidies in Tackling Energy Poverty in Czechia

The contribution assesses whether two Czech housing retrofit subsidy schemes—New Green Savings Light and Renovate the House after Grandma—advance both climate objectives and the reduction of energy poverty and vulnerability—publicly stated goals. Using an expanded energy justice framework, the study moves beyond documenting distributional, procedural, and recognition-based injustices to interrogate how dominant framings of energy poverty and vulnerability—together with systematic misrecognition of the lived realities of the energy-poor—are embedded in policy design and governance. Drawing on interviews with experts, energy advisors, and programme recipients, the analysis shows how these structural and ideational conditions reproduce existing vulnerabilities, privileging already better-positioned households while excluding those most at risk. The programmes’ reliance on individualised responsibility, narrow technocratic focus and fragmented governance undermine their restorative potential: rather than remedying structural disadvantage, they risk fostering a “restorative discourse” in which energy poverty is prematurely portrayed as resolved. Addressing energy poverty in ways that achieve genuine energy justice therefore requires not only subsidy schemes, but a framing shift together with wider structural reforms and socio-technical interventions.