
The REVERTER project targeting the energy poor has been launched, which will create roadmaps for energy renovation of homes and implement a One Stop Service for renovation in four pilot European cities.
The REVERTER project funded by the EU LIFE program aims to contribute to improving the lives of people in Europe by improving energy efficiency in residential buildings.
The project, aiming to provide solutions to reduce energy poverty in Europe, by developing 9 different roadmaps and working closely with end users in 4 pilot countries – Bulgaria, Greece, Latvia and Portugal, started with a successful kick-off meeting in Athens. The project and its results are extremely timely, as energy poverty is a major socio-economic problem of today’s society, depriving people of a basic standard of living and quality of life.
According to the latest Eurostat and other data on energy poverty in Europe, around 7% of European citizens cannot afford to heat their homes adequately, 6.4% report overdue utility bills, more than 16% spend significantly high percentage of their income for energy costs, while, on the other hand, 14.6% present unusually low energy costs as a result of their low income and the underheating of their home (Buzarovski et al. 2020). Energy poverty is mainly related to high energy prices, low household incomes and low energy efficiency in buildings and systems. Due to the energy crisis in Europe, the importance of these factors has escalated. Eurostat data shows the sharp increase in prices in the first half of 2022.
Two of the three main causes of energy poverty are difficult to influence, such as high energy costs and low incomes. However, it is possible to improve the energy efficiency of the buildings they live in, as various EU funds as well as local programs provide sufficient support for those seeking to renovate their buildings. Vulnerable households in Bulgaria are characterized by extreme thrift and lack of comfort in their homes. Low incomes and difficulty paying energy bills lead to insufficient heating, poor living conditions, and hence health problems. The main problem is that people are sometimes not well informed about the options they have. Thus, one of the aims of this project is to change that – to raise awareness, inform and engage people in the specific pilot regions of this project to inform and act to improve the quality of life through improving the energy efficiency of the building in which they live.
The REVERTER project, which is financed under the LIFE program of the European Union, aims to develop 9 roadmaps for increasing the energy efficiency of homes. The roadmaps will be tailored to the characteristics of the building stock, the characteristics of vulnerable households and the climatic conditions in order to cover a sufficiently representative group of cases that will allow a larger scale implementation and implementation of the proposed measures. The roadmaps will target the most vulnerable and least energy-efficient homes first (the most vulnerable first), address tenant-owner dilemmas and address market, information and behavioral errors by creating the “one-stop-shop” (OSS) service to include vulnerable households in subsidized programs to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. The project will test the roadmaps by creating a network of pilot participants in four European cities (Brezovo – Bulgaria, Athens – Greece, Riga – Latvia and Coimbra – Portugal) that cover different climate regions and socio-economic conditions in terms of age and size of the buildings, the owner – occupancy rate, percentage of multi-family houses and single-family houses, income, values and beliefs of the residents, etc.
The project is financed by the LIFE program of the European Union under GA No. 101076277.
The project consortium: The project started in November 2022, implemented by a consortium consisting of 12 partners – National Technical University of Athens – Laboratory of Mining and Environmental Technologies (Greece), which is also the coordinator of the project, Institute of Systems and Robotics (Portugal ), Ekodoma Ltd. (Latvia), Green Synergy Cluster (Bulgaria), Fundació Europace (Spain), Foundation Center for Renewable Energy Sources and Savings (Greece), B-Link (Spain), Municipality of Brezovo (Bulgaria), EKPIZO – Consumer Association “Quality of Life ” (Greece), Municipality of Coimbra (Portugal), “Riga Energy Agency” (Latvia) and WIT Berry (Latvia).