WELLBASED just published the findings of its most recent research carried out between October 2022 till April 2023. It shows that low-income households were not comfortably warm in their homes during the past winter and suffered from bad health. This is of particular concern as all five countries covered by the survey introduced emergency measures for the most vulnerable including regulated tariffs and energy vouchers or grants for home energy retrofits.
Key take-aways for advocacy work
Extreme heat waves in Summer, floods in Autumn, cold winters…anxiety, asthma, arthritis…for people in some parts of Europe, energy poverty has become an all-year-round worry. There is no excuse anymore for political action that fails to address the links between public health and energy access: health problems can be symptoms revealing energy poverty (and vice versa). In short: we need a health-proof energy system!
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- Policymakers should use health problems as a means of identifying people with additional energy needs
- Support programmes must be put in place to address these overlapping issues.
- There is an urgent need for public policy to address housing standards and energy efficiency.
Quotes from the two study aithors
“Subsidies were not enough or did not reach the right people. The people we interviewed felt obliged to use different coping practices to cope in the winter. Among our respondents, for example, 13% went to public buildings and 21% went to a neighbor or friend to keep warm,” states study co-author Professor Lucie Middlemiss, energy poverty expert from University of Leeds.
“If policymakers do not open their eyes to see the disastrous effects of energy poverty on the physical and mental health of people, and take action against it, millions of European lives will be negatively affected, and even in danger.” says health expert Elena Rocher, from Las Naves Foundation, coordinator of the study.
Discover more about the study, its methodology and key recommendations to policymakers; and access the findings document at
The download link 🡪 https://wellbased.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/WELLBASED_Findings-2023_FINAL.pdf
The WELBASSED project website 🡪 www.wellbased.eu
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