International

Smarter Finance for EU aims to accelerate the roll-out of certified green homes across Europe – including the development and adoption of over €100bn worth of green mortgages, loans and development finance. Led by Habitat for Humanity, the project’s energy poverty element will aim to improve the health and comfort, financial stability, and energy performance of very low income, vulnerable households. It will also facilitate European and global discussions on what knowledge and lessons learned can be shared when implementing solutions that combine government incentives with private bank financing.

RETE ASSIST is an Italian network of operators and stakeholders working on energy poverty. It was created to consolidate, strengthen and carry on the work started within the European ASSIST project. It proposes a multi-level approach in line with the need for a holistic solution to deal with complex and multidimensional problems that embrace aspects ranging from social to technical. It addresses both operators (physical persons) and public and private actors (legal persons) working on the ground to tackle energy poverty. The underpinning concept of RETE ASSIST is to empower all actors and facilitate the flow of information between them.

SocialWatt aimed to enable obligated parties under Article 7 of the Energy Efficiency Directive across Europe to develop, adopt, test and spread innovative schemes to alleviate energy poverty. The appropriate tools developed within the framework of SocialWatt aimed to help utilities and energy suppliers effectively identify energy poor households, as well as develop and monitor schemes that focus on increasing the energy efficiency of these houses. The ‘SocialWatt Analyser’ tool combined such data with other available data (national, regional and local statistical data, data from social services etc.) to support utilities and energy suppliers identify energy poor citizens.

The project aimed to train 15 PhD researchers to design transformational pathways that tackle Energy Poverty and Justice. It supported in providing evidence and using the decentralised nature of ‘Positive Energy Districts’ and ‘Networks of Districts’ as the central platform of transformation, whilst recognising the economic, social and environmental challenges faced.

The EnerGAware project's main objective was to decrease energy consumption and emissions in an affordable housing pilot and increase the affordable housing tenants’ understanding and engagement in energy efficiency. The EnerGAware project developed and tested, in 100 affordable homes, a serious game that was linked to the actual energy consumption (smart meter data) of the game user’s home and embedded in social media and networking tools. The EnerGAware solution provided an innovative IT ecosystem in which users could design their own virtual home and Avatar and learn about the potential energy savings, from installing energy-efficiency measures and changing user behaviour, whilst maintaining the comfort of their Avatar.

Energy Conscious Consumers ECO2 facilitated a large amount of consumers to become conscious about and improve their energy efficiency. It offered them two forms of learning: online e-learning, or transformative group learning, in which the e-learning system supported the group processes. Together the two – single or group processes - provided attractive approaches for a wide array of consumer segments.

EnergyKeeper aimed to design, develop and test a novel, scalable, sustainable and cost competitive flow battery based on organic redox active materials. This battery helped remote communities, along with the implementation of RES equipments, to have a more stable and cheaper access to electricity. The partners advanced the technology of metal-free, organic RFB from laboratory to prototype scale.

The Finnish Energy Observatory consisted of a network of experts aiming to address Finland’s most pressing energy challenges related to climate change. FEnO aimed to support evidence-based decision-making for Finland, and the Nordic region more widely, to achieve a clean energy transition without leaving anyone behind, i.e. to ensure the mitigation of social and energy inequalities.

Impartial and independent advice on energy consumption and how to make a home home warmer.

This measure provides households with financial assistance to replace the existing heating oil boilers with natural gas boilers.