FIESTA - Families Intelligent Energy Saving Targeted Action

FIESTA (http://www.fiesta-audit.eu/en/the-project) decided to embrace such issue with the ambitious goal to help local authorities in 5 European countries (Spain, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria and Cyprus) to support families to save energy at home, to adopt more sustainable consumption behaviour, acting both on their energy consumption behaviour and on their purchasing decisions.

14 Energy Help Desk (EHD) had been established in the partner municipalities providing support and door to door energy audits for families, aimed to cut down households’ energy consumption and related emissions, by supporting families in:

• using energy more efficiently at home, by simply readapting daily habits.
• purchasing more energy-efficient heating and cooling systems.
• investing in home energy production from renewable sources.

With a total budget of over 1 million €, in the early implementation phase of the project all FIESTA tools had been designed and realized,that represent the FIESTA pillars, merging together technical, training, dissemination and replications skills and setting the premises for project core activities and their smooth implementation. FIESTA methodology is supported by a Guidebook for Energy Advisors and an Energy Audit Tool1, an excel spreadsheet, aimed at homogenizing the data collected in each of the five participating countries and, at the same time, ensuring enough flexibility to adapt the data to the current legislation and climatic conditions of each partner city. Such tool considered all main data to be collected and checked duringan energy audit.

A tailored training for FIESTA Energy Advisors was organised to bridge the gaps and grant common ground, providing project partners with a hands-on approach to the FIESTA energy audit tool and to its concrete application. Along with the Energy Audit Tool, two additional tools were created to support project activities also in terms of communication, dissemination and replication: the FIESTA Energy Efficiency Guide for Households2, including a full range of easy to understand and implement measures - often cost-free and cost-efficient - and the FIESTA cartoons, explaining to young and old alike the main principles of home energy efficiency. FIESTA workshops, lotteries, stands and consumer purchasing groups were organized to actively engage the largest possible number of households in EHD (energy help desk) free-of-charge services. All project activities pursued the goal of facilitating local authorities to get in touch with their citizens and win their interest, yet energyaudits went beyond such expectations. During energy audits a bond of trust was established between the family and the FIESTA advisor, which ensured that the information received by the former was acknowledge as valuable and reliable, resulting in tangible actions generating significant impacts and savings.

The project started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It benefited the energy advisors and addressed the topics of behaviour, heating and cooling system, household appliances, indoor comfort (thermal comfort, housing quality), energy access and consumption, energy audits, energy efficiency and vulnerable consumers (disabled, students, tenants, public housing inhabitants).