The impact of the crisis on the energy demand and energy intensity in Central and Eastern European countries

Abstract:

The purpose of our paper is to analyze the impact of the recent crisis on the oil and electricity demand and the energy intensity of different Central and Eastern European countries, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

Furthermore, we would like to reveal whether there is a lag in the adjustment of energy consumption. In analyzing energy intensity, we use motor gasoline, diesel oil and electricity consumption data and ignore coal and natural gas data. By so doing, we avoid failures arising from changing coal/gas consumption due to changing weather conditions.

Our results show that the crisis did impact energy consumption and reveal that the improvement of energy intensity halted in 2009, implying that the economic players did not immediately adjust their energy consumption according to their economic activity. The gasoline and diesel intensity, however, deteriorated (increased) only in the Czech Republic and in Hungary. In Slovakia and Poland there were no significant changes.