LOCATEE's overarching goal is to support local municipalities in addressing energy poverty through the renovation of private multiapartment buildings for vulnerable residents.
This is an international, transdisciplinary research project on youth, energy behaviour, and climate change adaptation in cities. It aims to assess and build the capacity of young students (of legal age, university or vocational) to mitigate and adapt to urban climate change through more efficient, lower-emission, less fossil-dependent energy use. The rationale is that young people are disproportionately burdened by energy costs relative to their income, yet hold real potential to shift the status quo through peer-to-peer influence on future generations and professionals. The project covers eight Latin American countries (Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Colombia, Chile) and southern Europe (Spain, Portugal), regions chosen for their climate diversity, energy vulnerability, and exposure to extreme climate impacts.
This project develops a national energy poverty index and maps energy poverty across Portugal at the district and municipality levels, covering mainland Portugal, the Azores, and Madeira. The work also discusses the indicators defined in the ELPPE (Estratégia de Longo Prazo para o Combate à Pobreza Energética, Portugal's national long-term strategy against energy poverty), spanning primary indicators (inability to keep the home adequately warm, poor energy performance of dwellings, damp/mould/rot problems, thermal discomfort in summer, and high energy expenditure burden) and contextual indicators (poverty risk, utility debt, disconnections, self-supply from renewables, and energy literacy).
A digital OSS empowering homeowners renovating to choose the right professionals and navigate a complex financial process
Empowering local and regional authorities is pivotal in achieving the EU's ambitious climate neutrality goals by 2050. The #ENTRACK project recognizes the challenges faced by local policymakers, especially in rural areas, where a lack of knowledge and technical capacity often hinders socially just energy planning.
The aim is to delve into the new challenges of housing and built environments concerning domestic energy use and indoor environmental quality (IEQ) that affect the population in inequity, vulnerability, health, and well-being. Specifically, daily tasks from living and newer ones, such as teleworking, boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic, are explored to determine their environmental, social, and economic impacts. This study has an exploratory nature, so two approaches are applied: 1) quantitative: we will analyze surveys, sharing previous and ongoing project insights from regions and other data-based analyses; 2) qualitative, we will explore individual/collective experiences from other techniques (interviews, focus groups, community sessions), using photos, either taken by participants (Photovoice technique or similar), or by Generative Artificial Intelligence (photo-elicitation). A mixed approach and transdisciplinary work contribute to shifts toward societal and environmental enhancement in the Climate Change context following SDGs.