ENPOR

Actions to Mitigate Energy Poverty in the Private Rented Sector

September 2020 - November 2023

Energy poverty – or vulnerability – is a critical factor for a fair energy transition. It remains at high levels in Europe due to increasing energy costs and slow progress on energy efficiency improvements. Alleviating its impact in the private rented sector (PRS) is a challenge because of the difficulty:

to identify and quantify energy-poor households in the sector,
to deliver energy efficiency measures to these households due to structural problems like information deficits, split incentives, and more.

ENPOR aims to overcome both challenges – making energy poverty in the PRS visible (and as far as possible quantifiable) and testing energy efficiency support schemes to address it, identifying energy poor tenants (and respective homeowners) as well as understanding and addressing their needs.

ENPOR at a glance

Energy poverty – or vulnerability- is a critical factor for a fair energy transition. Alleviating its impact in the private rented sector is a challenge because it can be hidden. ENPOR, a project funded by the EU programme Horizon 2020, increases the capacity of the decision-makers to understand and mitigate its effects by designing and implementing ten policies.

Energy poverty remains at high levels in the EU Member States due to increasing energy costs and slow progress on energy efficiency improvements. Despite various policies in place that directly or indirectly mitigate energy poverty in the household level, energy poverty is increasing in the private rented sector.

The sector also presents quite specific issues that cannot be dealt adequately in the framework of energy poverty linked directly to energy efficiency, such as:

the high fragmentation of the sector and the consequential difficulty to target/address the considerable amount of owners and tenants active in the PRS,
the lack of targeted policies and incentives (in comparison with what has been done in the social housing or the homeowners’ sectors),
the difficulty to identify and quantify energy-poor households in the PRS; and
the delivery of energy efficiency measures to these households is difficult due to structural problems like information deficits, split incentives, and others.

ENPOR aims to overcome both challenges – making energy poverty in the PRS visible (and as far as possible quantifiable) and testing energy efficiency support schemes to address it, identifying energy poor tenants (and respective homeowners) as well as understanding and addressing their needs.

Objectives

Deepen understanding on energy poverty policies for the private rented sector – ENPOR will examine, assess and synthesise 30 energy efficiency policies that tackle energy poverty in the PRS sector across the EU to better understand the factors that trigger or prevent energy efficiency investments.
Monitor dimensions of energy poverty in the private rented sector – ENPOR will develop the Energy Poverty Dashboard, which will reveal the geographies of energy poverty in the PRS and help detect, quantify and monitor the effects of energy efficiency policies on energy poverty, including its hidden forms. It will thus examine aspects of poverty in the PRS (such as physical health, mental health and well-being) and their links to gender and other social dimensions to define suitable measures for energy poverty alleviation as a result of specific policies. Indicators will be developed to adjust policies to better address specificities of the PRS, and ultimately assist in calculating the ENPOR impacts. These indicators will also investigate structural factors (for instance by showing how many female-headed households live in private rented housing and are unable to invest in energy efficiency) leading to split incentives, lock-in effects and gender issues as barriers to energy efficiency in PRS.
Support the set-up and implementation of energy efficiency policies to alleviate energy poverty in the private rented sector – ENPOR will support the implementation of 10 energy efficiency policies and measures for energy poverty in the PRS in 7 MS.

To this aim, ENPOR did: