In July 2025, the Energy Poverty Advisory Hub (EPAH) spotlighted one of Europe’s fastest-growing but least explored challenges, summer energy poverty (SEPOV), through two key knowledge-sharing events: the #1st EPAH Practitioners Event and the #19th Lunch Talk. Together, these gatherings showcased the urgent need to understand, diagnose, and address the disproportionate impacts of extreme heat on vulnerable communities.
Practitioners' Event
On 1 July 2025, around 70 practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and community leaders from across Southern Europe gathered to discuss about “Cool Solutions for Hot Regions: Addressing Summer Energy Poverty through Data and Action.” Held during an exceptionally severe European heatwave, the event underscored the scale of the challenge. Central themes included the critical importance of urban heat island effects in exacerbating indoor thermal discomfort, the need for both immediate protective measures and long-term structural changes, the value of combining traditional cooling knowledge with modern technological solutions, and the essential role of multi-scale data collection and community engagement in developing effective interventions. The session demonstrated how summer energy poverty requires fundamentally different approaches from winter energy poverty, necessitating new indicators, measurement tools, and policy frameworks specifically designed for extreme heat conditions.
Dr. João Pedro Gouveia, Researcher, NOVA School of Science and Technology - FCT NOVA, EPAH team, opened the session by highlighting the infrastructure gap in Europe's cooling infrastructure and its disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations. Europe’s cooling demand has quadrupled since 1979, yet only 19% of EU households have air conditioning—a stark contrast with the US (90%). This disparity, combined with rising energy costs, creates significant risks for vulnerable populations during increasingly frequent and intense heatwaves.
Marine Cornelis, Executive Director, Next Energy Consumer, provided a comprehensive overview of SEPOV, emphasising its urban dimension, especially in areas affected by urban heat islands. She outlined eight key policy recommendations: defining relevant SEPOV indicators, enhancing data collection, supporting nature-based solutions and energy efficiency, fostering inclusive urban planning, improving cooling technologies with flexible tariffs, expanding funding mechanisms, developing skills and awareness, and strengthening monitoring systems.
Dr. Pedro Palma, Researcher, NOVA School of Science and Technology - FCT NOVA, focused on multi-scale diagnostic tools. National-level analysis enables problem-setting and policy frameworks, while regional and local assessments are more effective for detecting vulnerable groups and monitoring intervention impacts. He showcased data from Portugal where 38% of households report difficulty maintaining comfortable indoor temperatures during summer. In Lisbon, this figure rises to 57%, compared to 23% in Porto. Palma stressed the importance of localised diagnostics for targeted interventions.
Dr. Carmen Sánchez Guevara, Associate Professor, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, shared insights from the Cooltorise project, which trained 381 community energy agents to conduct outreach on summer energy poverty. She stressed the value of recovering traditional "heat culture"—popular knowledge and intergenerational learning about coping with high temperatures.
Alison de Luise, Covenant of Mayors Europe, presented the Cities Refresh campaign, structured around four pillars: Nature, Design, Governance, and Community. Case studies from Getafe, Rethymno, Marseille, and Maribor illustrated how local governments are integrating cooling solutions into urban planning.
Neil Muscat, Environmental Manager, Western Regional Council, Malta, discussed Malta’s unique context that is progressive policies on paper, yet persistent barriers in practice, such as the affordability of energy efficiency measures and urban development patterns undermining traditional climate adaptation. Muscat's recommendations focus on regulatory improvements: establishing mandatory roof and façade insulation with double glazing for new developments, creating renewable energy communities, revising local development plans to include shared roof spaces rather than maximum floor area, implementing legally binding solar rights protection, and strategically phasing out subsidized tariffs once comprehensive efficiency standards are implemented.
The session also included a participatory moment where participants were divided into breakout rooms. The group exchanges aimed to explore key questions related to recognition of summer energy poverty, coping mechanisms and best practices. Overall, the discussion highlighted summer energy poverty as an urgent and growing challenge that requires coordinated, multi-scale responses. Success depends on combining immediate interventions (such as cooling kits, warning systems, and public cooling spaces) with long-term structural changes (including building efficiency standards, urban planning reform, and renewable energy communities). The integration of traditional knowledge with modern technology, participatory community engagement, and comprehensive policy frameworks emerged as essential elements for practical solutions. Cities and regions must act now to protect vulnerable populations while building resilience for increasingly extreme summer conditions.
Lunch Talk
“Heat stress is one of the main risks to human health that really requires urgent action”, Julie Berckmans, Expert – Climate Change and Adaptation, European Environment Agency.
The 19th EPAH lunch talk, held on 16 July 2025, brought together over 70 participants to discuss further the growing challenge of summer energy poverty and the need for socially just climate adaptation. The session explored how different vulnerabilities intersect with heat exposure and featured insights from local actors working to strengthen resilience.
Moderated by Marta Garcia, CEO, ECOSERVEIS, EPAH team, the session featured contributions from Julie Berckmans, Climate Change and Adaptation Expert at the European Environment Agency (EEA), and João Pedro Gouveia.
Berckmans presented findings from the first European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA), which identifies heat stress as one of the EU’s most pressing climate risks. Drawing on the EEA’s report Social Fairness in Preparing for Climate Change, she noted that 19% of EU residents are unable to keep their homes comfortably cool during summer. Lower-income groups are particularly affected, especially in urban environments where the built surroundings amplify heat exposure.
She emphasised that older adults, children, outdoor workers, and people living in overcrowded or poorly insulated homes face heightened vulnerability. Renovation policies, she warned, can inadvertently worsen inequality. “They don’t equally affect different population groups and can unfairly burden low-income households.”
Among promising practices, Berckmans highlighted a French regulation allowing landlords to raise rents by up to 15% of renovation costs — only if improvements meet set performance thresholds — helping to contain post-renovation increases. In Belgium, the Sociale Energie Sprong initiative uses prefabricated cladding to speed up social housing retrofits while keeping costs manageable.
She also encouraged participants to explore the EEA’s Climate-ADAPT platform, which features tools and case studies such as the Paris Oasis Schoolyard Programme, turning paved schoolyards into cooler, shaded environments.
Gouveia connected the Lunch Talk to the Practitioners Event, emphasising data gaps, regional variations in heat vulnerability, and the critical need for locally disaggregated information. He highlighted successful initiatives discussed during the event and reinforced the importance of community engagement in developing effective responses.
In the closing discussion, Dr. Carmen Sánchez-Guevara stressed the value of local dialogue. “Let’s talk — how do you cope with heat? How can we help?” she said, urging solutions rooted in people’s lived experience.
Berckmans highlighted the Urban ReLeaf initiative, where citizens collect real-time temperature and humidity data to guide local interventions. “Community engagement can help define which areas are the hottest or coolest, and where measures are most efficient,” she added.
Speakers agreed that while winter energy poverty has received increasing attention, summer energy poverty remains under-recognised across energy, housing, and health frameworks. Gouveia called for stronger cross-sector coordination, improved monitoring, and inclusive policy design that reflects heat-related risks.
“We are not doing enough, and climate change is putting more pressure on us,” Gouveia concluded. “It’s a problem for all — but especially for energy-poor people, who face deeper vulnerability.”
EPAH’s integrated knowledge sharing approach
The juxtaposition of the Practitioners' Event and the Lunch Talk exemplifies EPAH’s multi-layered knowledge-sharing strategy:
- The Practitioners' Event offers a deep-dive, expert-level space for exchange, peer learning, and co-creation of solutions around a specific topic.
- The Lunch Talks provide an accessible, regular platform for municipalities, practitioners, and interested stakeholders across Europe to discuss experiences and learn from emerging research and local initiatives.
Both formats prioritise interaction, mutual learning, and practical application, contributing to a growing community of practice on energy poverty in Europe.
As extreme heat events become Europe’s new climate reality, EPAH will continue to provide spaces for shared learning and action ensuring that local voices, community knowledge, and scientific insights inform a fair and resilient energy transition for all.
Presentations from the two events
Joao Gouveia, 1st EPAH Practitioners Event
Pedro Palma, Diagnosing Summer EP at Multiple Spatial Scales
Marine Cornelis, Framing SEPOV in the EU
Carmen Sánchez-Guevara , Cooltorise
Alison de Luise, Cities Refresh Campaign
Neil Muscat, Challenges and Opportunities in Renovation and Renewables in Malta
Julie Berckmans, Extreme Heat and Summer EP
Details
- Publication date
- 18 July 2025