Pop-up Energy Desks

The pop-up energy desks heled residents find solutions to reduce their energy bills. The most impactful carbon reduction and energy-saving measures were installations of improved insulation, cavity wall insulation, replacement boilers and draught-proofing. Among others, ESC referred residents to the ‘Warm Home Check’ service. This was a free service for local people at risk of fuel poverty which offered a range of retrofit measures from minor measures such as LED lightbulbs and draught excluding to major measures such as wall insulation, new boilers and central heating systems. Other elements of ESC work such as event or workshops were also promoted.

Events such as Pop-up Energy Desks or Community Fun Days require a high organisational effort, including:

• Staff time to plan, deliver and market the event
• Marketing costs
• Outreach activities costs, for example craft materials
• Food and refreshments.

ESC also cooperated with further social services to provide as much information as possible. For example, clients with financial difficulties were referred to “Citizens Advice” and other similar local support services. ESC also referred people to the food bank or directly provides food bank and fuel bank vouchers.

Challenges and solutions

In order to keep energy bill savings that were achieved through energy advice, residents have to evaluate their situation annually. Thus, advice activities would have to be repeated yearly as otherwise residents are likely to overpay again after one year. Ideally, energy advice clients are contacted after one year again to see if the tariff still suits their needs. In practice, this is very time-consuming and relies on ongoing funding. Covid lockdowns obliged ESC to convert their pop up energy advice desks to a telephone advice line and home delivery of energy saving measures. 

Long-term aspects

• Building relationships through Pop-Up Energy Desks with marginalized or at-risk communities allows providing tailored K4 also for other issues, in the long term.
• Costly measures take longer than smaller measures to pay back the initial cost before turning into a net profit for the residents.
• The installation of energy efficiency measures or renew­ able energy generation results in a long-term benefit for the residents in both cost and energy savings.

Some concrete Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) included:

• 289 pop-up energy desks were organised during the project period (2016-2019). 
• 3544 residents were reached. 
• Recommendations to the Warm Home Check service resulted in 33 major measures and 168 minor measures being implemented, equivalent to an annual saving of 31,000 kg of carbon.
• Between 2020 and 2021 ESC advised via helpline 614 people, 212 of whom had multiple appointments. 76% of clients had household incomes below £ 16190.211 clients were put forward for energy efficiency measures worth £ 263,204.

The Pop-Up Energy Desks organised in Hastings were part of the collection of best practices made over three years by the partners of the Interreg NWE funded project „Climate Active Neighbourhoods“. The multi-national consortium based in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK has closely collaborated on methods and solutions for realising a low carbon future, increased energy efficiency and a socially just energy transition on the neighbourhood level. During the initial phase of the project (2016-2020), CAN focused on neighbourhoods in need of renovation in municipalities of different sizes in Northwest Europe. Innovative activation approaches for the expansion of energy retrofits in neighbourhoods have been implemented by the project partners (12 in total).
 

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  Countries impacted:
  

  United Kingdom
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  Geographical scale:
  

  Regional and Local
• 
  Energy poverty phase:
  

  Diagnosis
• 
  Intervention type:
  

  Consumer Advice, protection and empowerment

  Transparency and information sharing
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  Professionals involved:
  

  Technician

  Volunteer

  Social worker
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  Type of funding:
  

  Supported by the INTERREG North-West Europe Program
• SDGs addressed: