Time to address Europe’s hot and cold homes crisis

(EurActiv, 20 Feb 2019) Most European countries have significant energy poverty problems and are unable to keep their citizens warm during winter. In fact, that applies as much to cooling as to heating, writes Adrian Joyce.

Adrian Joyce is campaign director at Renovate Europe, a political communications campaign with the ambition to reduce the energy demand of the EU building stock by 80% by 2050.

Is it acceptable in 2019 that nearly one in ten households across Europe are unable to keep their homes warm in winter? We have grown so used to living with energy poverty that it may seem strange to ask that question, even when a Friends of the Earth report out today finds that most European countries have significant energy poverty problems and will not be able to keep their citizens warm this year.

In a graphic to makes architects’ hearts sink, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia foot the table for damp, leaky homes with high energy bills. Meanwhile, the EU’s coldest nations – Sweden, Finland and Denmark – still have the warmest homes.

We are familiar with not asking why this should be. But actually, there are other questions that arise from a new European Environment Agency (EEA) report which similarly demands a response. For example, should we tolerate a Europe in which one in five people cannot keep their homes cool in summer?

This is not a niche issue reserved for Mediterranean countries: 250 people died in the heatwave that hit Denmark last summer. As climate change takes hold this century, unequal outcomes may loom ever larger.

Housing inequality is a key driver of unjust climate impacts – and that applies as much to cooling as to heating.  Heat rises and it seeps through thin ceilings, placing top floor residents at greatest risk of heat injury. Just over half of the victims of the Paris heatwave of 2003 lived on the top two floors of traditional Paris ‘service rooms’. Often they were elderly, or immobile.

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EurActiv, 20 Feb 2019: Time to address Europe’s hot and cold homes crisis