Mitigating GHG Emissions through energy poverty alleviation in Romania (EnPoweR)
The Project was funded by the European Climate Initiative (EUKI) and was a collaboration between Babes-Bolyai University, the municipality of Cluj-Napoca and adelphi. The project was designed to develop tailored solutions to energy poverty alleviation in order to reduce energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions in Romania. The project conluded in May 2021 and all publications can be found here.
Background
Energy poverty poses a significant problem across southeast Europe. Old appliances and unrenovated houses lead to high energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions as well as a lower quality of life and health issues for affected households. However, the link between energy poverty, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions is largley unexplored, particularly in the South-Eastern European context. Furthermore, not all barriers to increase energy efficiency and related climate effects have been addressed: Energy poverty with its ramifications is not properly understood and integrated into policy-making, especially locally; there is an absence of specific data and hardly any analysis of the correlation between existing data sets, whereas existing data does not materialize in effective policy tools. For all these reasons, there is also a general lack of information and engagement of relevant stakeholders.
The 20 districts of the Cluj-Napoca metropolitan area comprise a range of different energy poverty types present in many places all over South-Eastern Europe, making the region an ideal research and policy development area with significant replication and upscaling potential.
Project Ambition
The goal of the project, through innovative research focusing on the links between energy poverty and emission mitigation, is to deliver new insights and provide guidance on how to effectively integrate sustainable development strategies in local policy frameworks. The research, data analysis, and findings will be presented to the local government in a policy paper and will be used to train the stakeholders at several workshops. These workshops will bring together representatives from energy suppliers, local governments and academia to explore policy options and provide capacity building training.
An interactive online map of the Cluj region will be developed and published to raise awareness of energy poverty among public, private and regional stakeholders. The map will stay available past the project end and can be used as an information tool for energy-saving measures and for accurate targeting of energy-efficiency and energy poverty alleviation projects and policy.
