EU funded project REVERTER tackles quality of life improvement in Europe

The project REVERTER aims to provide solutions to decrease energy poverty in Europe by developing 9 different roadmaps and working closely with the end consumers in 4 pilot countries – Bulgaria, Greece, Latvia and Portugal. The kick-off meeting in Athens emphasized the increased value of the project and its results in a time when energy poverty is becoming critical, and the need to address the increasing social-economic crisis is crucial.

According to recent Eurostat and other data for energy poverty across Europe, about 7% of European citizens could not afford to heat their homes adequately, 6.4% reported arrears on utility bills, more than 16% spent a significantly high percentage of their income on energy costs, while, on the other hand, 14.6% presented abnormally low energy expenditure, as a result of their low incomes. Energy poverty is mainly associated with high prices, low household income and energy-inefficient buildings and appliances. Due to the energy crisis in Europe, the importance of these factors has escalated. The Eurostat data demonstrates the sharp increase of prices in the first half of the year 2022.

“Households in any country, municipality or city cannot influence the prices of energy products or significantly change their income, two important drivers of energy poverty. However, they can improve the energy efficiency of the house in which they live, the third main driver of energy poverty, and reduce their energy costs in the long term. European funds and national programmes provide support in this direction. Unfortunately, consumers are sometimes not sufficiently informed about these possibilities or face financial, institutional and other barriers. The main objective of the project is to encourage the participation of citizens, especially the most vulnerable, in subsidised energy saving programmes through the establishment of ‘one-stop-shops’, the organisation of awareness-raising and information campaigns, and the development of appropriate policy recommendations,”

Dimitris Damigos, Project REVERTER Coordinator, Laboratory of Mining and Environmental Technology, National Technical University of Athens.

The project REVERTER, that is funded under the European Union’s LIFE Programme aims to develop 9 roadmaps by addressing the poor energy efficiency of dwellings. The roadmaps will be tailor-made to the characteristics of the building stock, the characteristics of the vulnerable households and the climate conditions to cover a sufficiently cohesive group of cases that will allow for a larger-scale rollout and replication of the proposed actions. The roadmaps will target the worst-performing homes first (“worst first” principle), will cope with split-incentive dilemmas and will address market, information and behavioural failures through the creation of “one-stop shops” (OSS) as defaults for the enrollment of vulnerable households in subsidised energy efficiency improvement programmes for buildings. The project will test the roadmaps by setting up a network of pilots in four European cities (Brezovo – Bulgaria, Athens – Greece, Riga – Latvia and Coimbra – Portugal) that cover different climate regions and socioeconomic conditions regarding age and size of buildings, owner-occupancy rates, percentage of Multi-Family Houses and Single Family Houses, income, values and beliefs of the inhabitants, etc.

The consortium of the project

The project has started in November 2022, it is implemented by a consortium comprising 12 partners – National Technical University of Athens – Laboratory of Mining and Environmental Technology (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), Centre for Renewable Energy Sources and Saving Foundation (Greece), B-Link (Spain), Obshtina Brezovo (Bulgaria), EKPIZO – Consumer Association “The Quality of Life” (Greece), Municipality of Coimbra (Portugal), Riga Municipal Agency “Riga Energy Agency” (Latvia) and WIT Berry (Latvia).