Anna Bajomi, Hanna Szemző and Éva Gerőházi from Metropolitan Research Institute participated at the conference “Reducing Energy Poverty by Energy Efficiency Projects in Residential Buildings: The Case for Eastern Europe” organised by Habitat for Humanity, in Brussels in 24-25 April 2017. The conference aimed at taking a deep look at the definition and policies of energy poverty in light of the energy efficient interventions the residential building stock is needed. By the participation of European and national policy makers the actors were trying to find out how energy poverty and energy efficiency are interlinked or sometimes conflicted. (The presentation of MRI on this issue can be found attached.)
The national examples have showed that several countries of Central and Eastern Europe have already introduced national subsidy schemes for assisting owners of residential buildings to implement energy efficient interventions and the countries of the Balkan or the former Soviet Union are also on the way to launch pilot projects. However these schemes are more likely to fulfil energy targets (more energy to be saved on national level) than to consider how energy poor can be or cannot be affected by them. The separation/connection of social policy and energy policy is still a topic of lively discussion not only in Central Europe but also in the old member states of the European Union.
(More information on the conference can be found at : https://getwarmhomes.org and read or colleague’s blog article about the conference.