Energy poverty in Europe still affects millions of households: in 2023, 10.6% of the EU population was unable to adequately heat their homes. Worsened by the global energy crisis and dependence on imports, this condition is linked to low incomes, high energy costs, and poor building efficiency. The EU and individual countries are taking action through measures to improve energy efficiency, support vulnerable groups, and promote renewable energy sources.
Sommario
Why Energy Poverty 0 project
National and EU initiatives are pivotal to tackling energy poverty at a macro level. However, general solutions can clash with the different local economic and structural situations, which would demand a tailored solution.
The Energy Poverty 0 project is part of the Energiesprong movement and funded by the EU Commission, aims to address this challenge.
A key component of this project is the EP-0 ICT tool, a digital web-based platform designed to analyze and visualize energy efficiency along with social and energy vulnerability across urban districts.
How the EP0 Tool works
The EP-0 ICT tool serves as a powerful decision-making platform, providing municipalities and housing agencies with critical insights to improve energy efficiency by prioritizing areas within the city at high risk of energy poverty. Its primary goals include:
- Identifying areas most at risk of energy inefficiency and social vulnerability.
- Enabling rapid and efficient analysis of the existing building stock at large scale.
- Supporting the development of energy-efficient renovation strategies at scale.
- Facilitating data-driven policy-making and resource allocation.
By integrating energy performance data with socioeconomic indicators, the tool empowers policymakers and stakeholders to implement effective actions for reducing energy poverty.
The EP-0 Tool Layers
The EP-0 ICT tool is structured around several analytical layers that provide comprehensive insights into urban energy efficiency.
- Building data layer
This layer aggregates essential data on the built environment, including:
- Geometric data: area, perimeter, construction year, height, and volume.
- Energy and environmental performance data: average heating and cooling consumption (kWh/m²/year) and CO₂ emissions, derived from climate-based pre-simulated archetypes.
- Building archetypes and clustering: classification based on construction year and shape factor (S/V) to group similar buildings for targeting collective interventions.
- Retrofit solutions: preliminary insights on potential retrofit interventions and results in terms of average energy consumption, as well as costs for installation and maintenance, based on pre-simulated archetype.
- Vulnerability index layer
Developed using established scientific methodologies and public data sources, this layer evaluates social and energy vulnerability at a census-section level. The goal was to build a methodology to assess vulnerability at scale, overcoming the need to perform case-by-case assessments and collect households’ sensible data.
Vulnerability is calculated across some selected indicators within the three main critical dimensions of vulnerability: socio-economic, building conditions, energy expenditure. Indicators include income and energy expenditure, vulnerable population by age, unemployment rate, dwelling ownership, education level, building’s age and state of conservation.
It finally combines these indicators across the three dimensions towards a Global Vulnerability Index, classifying districts into three risk levels using a traffic-light system:
- Red (critical): high vulnerability requiring immediate intervention.
- Orange (moderate): medium vulnerability with improvement potential.
- Yellow (mild): low vulnerability, but still to consider for long-term strategies.
- Catalogues of retrofit solutions
The tool proposes a repository of preliminary prefabricated retrofit solutions, many of them part of the Energiesprong Italian movement, categorized based on the main goal of the intervention (thermal envelope, energy solutions, building and living comfort), providing technical staff with indications on solution providers and main technical features of each element.
- Financial tool
To support investment decisions, the tool allows the user to perform a preliminary average financial and economic evaluation, based on the building and on some specific interventions. By considering incentive shares and financial schemes such as loans, the financial module provides users with key financial indicators, such as Investment amortization plan, Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Net Present Value (NPV), Payback period and economic viability of proposed renovations.
Guidelines for data collection and scalability
A significant challenge in energy poverty research is the availability of consistent digitised data. The EP-0 ICT tool strives to overcome this by integrating:
- Open Street Map (OSM) data for geo-referenced building data when available.
- Public databases and statistical calculations for vulnerability analyses.
- User-provided data sheets, with a structured collection methodology and guidelines including different sources and formats, allowing end-users to contribute and be autonomous in their analyses.
This structured approach ensures the tool remains scalable, adaptable, and applicable across different European regions.
The EP-0 ICT tool stands as a user-friendly solution supporting local authorities and social housing organizations in the fight against energy poverty. By merging energy and vulnerability data visualization, geospatial mapping, financial assessment, and retrofit solutions, it provides a holistic framework for energy requalification planning. As part of the Energy Poverty 0 project, this tool can be a resource for municipalities and policymakers striving to achieve a just and sustainable energy transition.
