The present work aims to describe and analyze the results of the interventions carried out in the Barcelona pilot site of the EmpowerMed project. The overall objective of EmpowerMed is to tackle energy poverty and to help improve the health of people in coastal areas of Mediterranean countries, with a particular focus on women. The main support approach implemented in Barcelona is Collective Advisory Assemblies (CAA), in the framework of Alliance against Energy Poverty. CAA is an innovative, collaborative empowering engagement tool that offers an alternative to the more traditional one-off individual household advice and support approaches. CAAs take place together with a monitoring campaign where: electricity consumption is analyzed to optimize the supply contracts, and indoor environmental comfort to provide recommendations for wellbeing improvement. Through the different approaches, a characterization of the people that have participated in the Barcelona pilot site was completed, from a socioeconomic, energy, thermal comfort and air quality perspective. Additionally, it was compared with a group of energy poverty non-affected households, which are involved in the monitoring campaign. Finally, the impact was quantified in terms of empowerment of energy poverty population and, potential economic savings.
Authors: Joana Ortiz (IREC), Mariana Jiménez Martínez (IREC), Alba Alegría-Sala (Polytechnic University of Catalonia), Sergio Tirado-Herrero (ICTA- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Irene González Pijuan (Enginyeria Sense Fronteres), Mònica Guiteras Blaya (Enginyeria Sense Fronteres), Lluc Canals Casals (IREC)
Keywords: energy poverty; collective advisory assembly; smart meters; thermal comfort; air quality; gender
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