LOCATEE – Local authorities tackling energy poverty in private multi-apartment buildings

LOCATEE’s overarching goal is to support local municipalities in addressing energy poverty by renovating private multi-apartment buildings for vulnerable residents.

The project will address the poor connection between the private housing owners and local climate and energy policies in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. LOCATEE will achieve this goal by providing a toolkit for identifying energy-vulnerable households, matching tailored interventions to their needs, and integrating energy poverty alleviation activities into long-term strategies of municipalities such as Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAP). Specifically, the project will use administrative data to develop typologies of households and buildings, which will contribute to finding priority intervention locations. This process will be in line with assisting authorities and social partners in addressing energy poverty locally through institutional, cross-sectoral coordination solutions, including the establishment of contact points and appointed focus groups with housing entities. These mechanisms will facilitate regular knowledge exchange on renovation programs and targeted solutions for people experiencing energy poverty. Using a pilot evidence-based approach, the project will address financial, regulatory, social and technical constraints in renovating private multi-apartment buildings while developing the capacity of local authorities to become intermediaries of the energy transition process. As a result, relevant stakeholders will collaboratively design and implement comprehensive interventions and support initiatives explicitly tailored to benefit vulnerable households. This evidence-based and collaborative approach will be implemented in three pilot municipalities in Central, Southern and Southeastern Europe: Rumia (Poland), Torres Vedras (Portugal) and Piraeus (Greece), while ensuring scaling up the LOCATEE framework to 32 more municipalities and then to further regions and municipalities in Europe. This 3-year project starts in October 2024.

Impact

The LOCATEE project employs a multi-faceted approach to combat energy poverty, addressing structural and policy-related challenges. Overall, the project during the timeline will deliver:

• 1 innovative tool allows the identification/measure/monitoring of energy poverty at the local level
• 3 real-life implementation sites
• 3 contact points focused on tackling energy poverty and supporting renovations
• 30 established partnerships between the municipality and multi-family building representatives
• 9 focus-group meetings one time per year in a particular municipality
• 12 local policies or strategies adapted based on 3 roadmaps
• 13 capacity building documents – publicly available LOCATEE report deliverables
• 3 open-access research papers
• 300 stakeholders trained during 25 in-person and on-site workshops with increasing skills and competencies
• 32 municipalities beyond the consortium implementing project tool
• 5,000 stakeholders informed through project channels.

We also expect that LOCATEE activities during the project’s lifetime will contribute to more than 50 building renovations and, therefore, generate broader positive ecological and social effects.

Funding information

The LOCATEE consortium’s proposal was submitted to the LIFE Programme (LIFE-2023-CET-ENERPOV). The consortium was awarded almost €1,83 million under grant agreement 101167621. The project will end on 30 September 2027.