COOLTORISE aims to reduce summer energy poverty incidence among European households, improving their indoor thermal habitability conditions and reducing their energy needs during the hot season, which will in turn decrease their exposure to heat and heat-related health risks.
In order to achieve this general objective, the project needs to address and achieve 6 important specific objectives:
Set a common framework on summer energy poverty in European countries affected by it. From evidence and indicators collected in all participant countries, partners will draw a common methodology to identify the households suffering from energy poverty in the summer.
Define solutions to tackle summer energy poverty. The project will draft solutions to alleviate families’ housing deprivation suffered in summer. These solutions will comprise areas from optimal housing using patterns in the hot season, and key strategies to optimise energy bills and access to social tariffs, to the installation of low-cost solutions to reduce indoor overheating and to increase thermal comfort. In addition, challenging outdoor interventions to mitigate the urban heat island and cool down surrounding urban area will be also carried out.
Train energy poverty agents to work with energy poor households and help them improve their living conditions. These energy poverty agents will play a key role in fighting energy poverty. In some cases, once the project is finished, these people will have improved skills and acquired new knowledge to put into practice in their continuous professional life. In other cases, they will be young people that, despite not being professionals in this field, will constitute citizens with new useful knowledge on energy savings and social inequalities.
Alleviate summer energy poverty conditions of more than 7,240 people. COOLTORISE project will engage more than 7,240 energy poor citizens and will work with them to reduce their vulnerability towards summer energy poverty. COOLTORISE will reduce their energy needs, improve their homes’ indoor thermal comfort, and cut down their energy bills. All these actions will turn into a reduction of heat-related health risks.
Foster women’s empowerment to try to revert the feminisation of energy poverty. The project addresses common barriers that impede the participation of women in programmed actions, such as having to take care of children or being elderly with mobility difficulties.
Accomplish a high level of dissemination that brings to the fore the issue of summer energy poverty. The project aims to go beyond the number of direct households COOLtoRISE will work with. This project intends to raise summer energy poverty awareness, highlighting its specificities and the need for implementing tailored solutions, schemes, and policies.
