STEP - Solutions to Tackle Energy Poverty

Solutions to Tackle Energy Poverty (STEP) is a project to develop a simple, innovative and replicable model of measures to address energy poverty. STEP’s overall objective is to alleviate energy poverty by encouraging behavioural change and low-cost energy efficiency solutions among consumers in or at risk of energy poverty through trusted, tailored advice. With a budget of over 1 million €, the project has 3 main activities and pillars which run through the entire project duration of 36 months.

STEP aims:

•To get consumer groups and frontline-organisations, who advise people on a range of issues such as financial or health-related ones, to partner and deliver advice to energy poor consumers.

•To help energy poor consumers across the 9 project countries save energy and improve their living standard. We will advise consumers on more efficient energy consumption and how this can help them save money and improve their health and well-being. We will carry out information campaigns, provide tips on how to save energy, demonstrate cost savings and help put in place low-cost energy efficiency measures.

•To disseminate best practices and policy choices that can alleviate energy poverty and promote their replication in other EU countries.

Local authorities help the project better reach their target group either by enabling us to train their frontline workers, open advice offices on behalf of STEP, facilitate our contact with other of their branches in social work or building management and renovation.

The project is a good practice that managed to advise consumers during the bywas developing phone lines on energy and including the phone number on energy bills. Another success was running the STEP videos in surgeries, waiting rooms and hospital screens. As for creating networks of advisors together with frontline workers our best practice was collaborating with municipalities’ citizen advisory networks, health workers and building managers in multi-family housing.

The project started in 2019 and is ongoing until 2022. It benefits energy advisors, energy poor, frontline workers, low income, national/local authorities and policy makers. It addresse the topics of health, heating and cooling system, income, indoor comfort (thermal comfort, housing quality), information and awareness, debts, insulation, law and legislation, quality of dwelling, regulation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy prices, social support, financing schemes, vulnerable consumers.

Some concrete key performance indicators (KPIs) of the project include:

• Consumers involved: 15.000.
• Support schemes established for energy efficiency and RES: 9
• Primary energy savings: 17.78 Gwh/year.
• Reduction of green house gas emissions: 2,869 tCO2-eq/year