Empowering communities: harnessing energy efficiency against energy poverty

In the post-pandemic era, with war near us and knocking on the EU’s doors, a very complicated situation is emerging in the European energy landscape: the precariousness of energy security and the volatility of energy prices. For small and impoverished communities in Eastern European regions, energy poverty is becoming an arising phenomenon, and vulnerable citizens are the most affected.

The initial response at the state level in many Eastern European countries was to limit energy prices by law (suspending the role of energy markets) and provide social subsidies for housing energy consumption. As a result, national budgets are under strong pressure, and inflation is starting to increase; economic growth is under discussion, at least for the short to medium term.

The REPowerEU initiative comes as a comprehensive response from the EU leadership to address all these threats and keep the EU on its path to climate neutrality by saving energy, producing green energy, and diversifying its energy supplies. Simultaneously, the Just Transition Mechanism ensures that the transition to a climate neutral economy takes place in a fair way, leaving no one behind.

“We must show solidarity with the most affected regions in Europe, such as coal mining regions and others, to ensure the Green Deal receives everyone’s full support and has a chance to become a reality,” says Frans Timmermans, the former Executive Vice-President of the European Commission.

The national plan for Recovery and Resilience for Romania contains important chapters for financing the renovation wave (especially for a significant number of old condominiums) and promoting greener energy. In our regions, extensive energy efficiency works are needed to transform a large number of old buildings into energy efficient ones, providing good indoor living conditions.

Simultaneously, many citizens are initiating projects to install photovoltaic panels and heat pumps in their houses using dedicated national programmes financed by EU funds or the Romanian Environment Fund. These citizens will become prosumers and will contribute directly to the EU targets for energy and climate. For example, in the last two years, up to 80,000 small prosumers have emerged, and the trend is to double the number in the next year.

In our city – Alba Iulia Municipality, ongoing and planned works for the current period aim to transform several thousand homes into modern and energy-efficient ones.

The Alba Local Energy Agency is currently working with many municipalities to support them in introducing and implementing dedicated packages of measures to green their energy consumption and address energy poverty in their territories. One of our latest initiatives is the start of the EU Life CEESEN BENDER project to create a pilot action to address energy poverty in the Municipality.

This editorial is extracted from our publication ‘Sustainable Regions in Action‘. Discover more here!