Under the Pilot Project “Energy Poverty – Assessment of the Impact of the Crisis and Review of Existing and Possible New Measures in the Member States”
Client: European Commission
Many people across Europe can no longer afford the rising energy prices, leading to a situation known as ‘energy poverty’. This aspect severely affects their lives, health, and well-being, while also exacerbating social and economic divides among communities and regions. Despite the growing focus on sustainability, there is a lack of comprehensive knowledge regarding energy poverty and its impacts, which limits our ability to address the issue effectively.
Our proposal, prepared as part of the GOPA Consortium, aims to enhance the understanding of energy poverty at various scales—urban, regional, national, and cross-national—along with its spatial, social, and economic implications. It aims to make this knowledge available to discuss effective and cost-efficient ways to tackle it, including renewable offers and energy transitions and connectivity. The proposal emphasises the need for a platform that provides accurate statistics and analyses of energy poverty levels, as well as opportunities to share best practices and research. This is in line with The European Economic and Social Committee’s advocacy for the establishment of a European energy poverty observatory. This urban and regional observatory could develop common European indices and indicators to help member states define energy poverty while taking their national contexts into account.
The work on this bid required us to adopt integrated, cross-sector and multi-scalar research approaches and to explore diverse models of energy production and delivery and how these are linked to different urbanities.