The second meeting of the Dialogue Groups on Energy efficiency measures to alleviate energy poverty was held on Friday 9 December 2022, from 10 to 11 am CET.

You can find attached to this post the agenda, presentation files and minutes.

The meeting provided an update with complements about the streamSAVE calculation methodology for this Priority Action. Then guest presentations shared experience about:

- Insights from the National research program on energy poverty in the Netherlands, by Anika Batenburg and Arianne J. van der Wal (TNO, the Netherlands), and

- The French framework on energy efficiency measures for energy poverty alleviation, by Ute Dubois (ISG International Business School, France)

Key points highlighted in the presentations and discussions:

– Much higher attention on energy poverty, now part of the general public debate.

– Reducing energy poverty brings multiple benefits (especially health benefits) that are likely more than compensating the intervention costs.

– Building renovations may also have negative effects for tenants, in case of increase in the rent.

– Evidence and indicative values about differences between energy poor households and other households as regards baseline energy consumption (before intervention).

– But not enough data available to define indicative values about possible differences in the effects of energy efficiency interventions, especially for behavioural measures.

– Differences in energy consumption between energy poor households and all households may vary according to the type of energy or end-use, and the sub-groups of energy poverty.

– Finding control groups when assessing the effects of energy efficiency interventions is not always possible, leaving before/after comparison as only alternative.

– Combining quantitative and qualitative methods provide complementary evidence to better understand the effects of energy efficiency interventions.

– Considerable public budget is used to mitigate the impacts of increasing energy prices with short term measures. Which raises debates about the targeting of the measures, and the balance between short-term and long-term measures.

– Implementing deep renovations for energy poor households is a difficult but essential task to really take them out of energy poverty.

You can continue the discussions on the online forum.

streamSAVE together with the SocialWatt project will organize a dialogue workshop on assessing the impacts of energy efficiency schemes tackling energy poverty, on Thursday 16 March 2023 (Brussels and online). 

Related resource:

- streamSAVE methodologies