SCEPA: Scaling Up the Energy Poverty Approach
Reduce and alleviate energy poverty by involving and empowering vulnerable households.
Context
The European Commission sees energy poverty as a major challenge.
Getting vulnerable citizens out of this situation is an urgent task for the European Union.
European Commission
EU surveys in 2021 revealed that fuel poverty affects up to 125 million citizens.
As a result of recent geopolitical events, energy prices are reaching record levels, and fuel poverty is increasing and intensifying rapidly. Proven measures to minimize energy poverty are available, but they are only applicable under local conditions and fail to reach all growing target groups.
Hard-to-reach vulnerable households require tailored approaches. Energy poverty is often one of many social problems facing households, and should therefore be tackled in an integrated way.
SCEPA aims to contribute to a fair and inclusive energy transition by further involving vulnerable households, reducing and alleviating energy poverty. In NWE’s partner areas, over 3.5 million households currently suffer from energy poverty.
Project
The Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) “SCEPA” project. SCEPA stands for “Scaling up the Energy Poverty Approach”.
The main purpose of this project is to reduce and minimize energy poverty by involving and empowering vulnerable households.
4 years
The overall duration of the project is 4 years, and the total project budget – funded by the Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) program – is €6,229,126.11 & total ERDF budget €3,737,475.65. SCEPA was launched in April 2023 and will run until June 30, 2027.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, SCEPA brings together and improves existing effective approaches to tackling fuel poverty, so that initiatives can be scaled up.
Project stakeholders learn from each other and share best practice to develop a Joint Action Strategy. The strategy provides nuanced details of what works for specific target groups in specific residential areas of NWE.
Later, the strategy will also contribute to the development of Local Action Plans for partner regions and cities. During the implementation of the pilot activities, three types of pilot with 12 types of interventions are being improved, tested and scaled up, reaching over 105,000 households.
Through monitoring and evaluation, the strategy is updated and shared with the SCEPA community of interest with a view to replication. In this way, vulnerable households in partner areas, public authorities and organizations beyond the SCEPA consortium seeking to amplify their approach to energy poverty will benefit.
Objectives
- Develop a Join Action Strategy (JAS) + Local Action Plans (LAPs) on reducing energy poverty, integrating state of the art knowledge/practices. Findings from the JAS + LAPs are translated into a data platform and toolbox for partners and target groups;
- Enhancing common and target group specific energy poverty tools for vulnerable households, including hard to get target groups;
- Enlarge SCEPA’s outreach to energy poor vulnerable households in NEW, by providing insights in project results + transfer of results to stakeholders and a Community of Interest
Partners
- City of Liège – Belgium
- European Association for Local Democracy
- Municipality of Arnhem – Netherlands
- HAN University of Applied Sciences – Netherlands
- Intercommunal Association of West Flanders – Belgium
- Municipality of Leeuwarden – Netherlands
- Paris Climate Agency – France
- South East Energy Agency – Ireland
