Multilevel governance and cross-sectoral cooperation to fight energy poverty

In their interventions, Housing Europe colleagues pointed out the most crucial policy asks:

• Important role of local partnerships with energy companies, construction sector, housing providers, tenants proposing adequate strategies
• Need for dedicated housing policies that increases the supply of adequate and affordable housing and focuses on social mix in local communities
• Smart financing: strengthen conventional and alternative ways to provide long-term low-cost capital financing for the renovation of social housing. This should be combined with welfare policies ensuring that low-income groups are not unduly burdened by climate change costs.

 

Moreover, Housing Europe highlighted the important work of the Energy Poverty Observatory where a case studies on dedicated financial schemes have been developed and that more needs to be done to tackle the skills gap in designing these schemes at local level.

In terms of funding opportunities, the invited colleague from EASME, Talia BRUN MARCEN raised the attention of the civil society to the newest H2020 calls on mitigating energy poverty. She stressed that one of the success factors of projects is the involvement of social actors by local and regional authorities.

The Rapporteur reminded that the aim of the Opinion is to convince local politicians that we should not separate energy, poverty and social policy issues but we should work in an integrative way. Projects and initiatives that already exist need to be combined and platforms-such as the Covenant of Mayors on energy poverty- that bring together stakeholders should be promoted. The Opinion will be adopted by the COR Plenary on 26-27 June 2019.