The Southern Regional Assembly was delighted to host the Interreg Europe EMPOWER Energy Poverty Technical Workshop on the 23rd & 24th March 2022 in conjunction with our energy poverty consultants 3 Counties Energy Agency (3CEA) the antenna organisation in Ireland for the European Energy Poverty Advisory hub.
The EMPOWER Energy Poverty Technical Workshop provided a platform to understand the causes of energy poverty, the prevalence of energy poverty across Europe and the need now more than ever with soaring energy prices for Countries to seek opportunities to identify and decrease energy poverty with presentations from the Energy Poverty Advisory Hub in Brussels and from Dr Niall Dunphy, Director, Cleaner Production Promotion Unit, University College Cork, Ireland.
Eileen O’Connor, Assistant Principal Officer in the Department of the Environment, Climate & Communications then provided us with a presentation on the Warmth and Wellbeing scheme in Ireland which is an initiative that aims to establish a link between the provision of extensive free energy efficiency upgrades to a positive effect on health and wellbeing of the people living in these homes. Initial findings demonstrate an improving living environment with lower heating bills and fewer hospital visits for respiratory conditions.
After establishing the need to address energy poverty the event went on to see a number of good practices from EMPOWER project partner stakeholders on how regions could identify or reduce energy poverty or implement behaviour change programmes to reduce energy poverty including:
- How Build Upon 2 are identifying energy poverty in social housing stock from Brian Cassidy, Senior Executive Engineer, Cork City Council, Ireland.
- Derek Roddy, Chief Executive Officer of Climote and Co-founder of Energy Cloud, Ireland provided a presentation on a mechanism on how wasted/unused renewable energy could be used to support households in energy poverty.
- How Living Consciously energy poverty behaviour change programme can not only address energy poverty but also create more of a community in disadvantaged areas from Sergio Gatteschi, Regional Agency for Waste and Resource Management, Florence, Italy.
- Sonia Sotero, Santander City Council, Spain provided us with a presentation on A Worthy Winter which aims to reduce energy poverty by replacing coal boilers with centralised biomass boilers.
- How Act 4 Eco energy poverty behaviour change programme is being utilised by over 10,000 people across Europe free of charge to assist them in reducing their energy consumption and costs from Dr Wendy Rowan and Dr Stephen McCarthy, University College Cork, Ireland and Sotiris Papadelis, HEBES Intelligence, Greece.
- Adriana Copot, from Energap, Slovenia presents how Citizens Energy Advice is reducing energy poverty with the aid of up to 100% funding through an Eco Fund in their region.
- How Smart Invent Application is helping to identify energy poverty in Mazovia, Poland by Żaneta Latarowska from the Mazovia Energy Agency in Poland by the creation of an online platform that has mapped the thermal standard of accommodation, heat source, income level and energy consumption of over 25,000 buildings to date.
- Simone Maggiore from Gestore Servizi Elettrici, Italy provides us with a presentation on how Energia su Misura energy poverty behaviour change programme is assisting in reducing energy poverty in social housing though the installation of smart devices and meters in these households.
- How RetroKit is creating a one stop shop platform and digitalisation to upscale home energy upgrades to reduce energy poverty from Xavier Dubuisson, Chief Executive Officer of RetroKit, Ireland.
More informations you can find under the folder Press releases on project library here
