Work program

WP1: Project management

The coordinator will guarantee the well achievement of management and coordination actions and two main core boards will be identified :

• Steering committee: the steering committee has the responsibility and the right to make decisions in order to manage the entire project and to secure that the project is conducted and run according to the targets and the time schedule. The steering committee consist of one person from each partner that will participate to all internal meeting.
• Work Package leaders: for each work package, a leader is assigned. The work package leader has the following responsibilities : to keep sure established targets of the WP are well carried out ; to create motivation and involvement in the WP ; to guarantee validation of results of the WP by other partners and to carry out synthesis ; to report results of the WP beneficiary. Progress reports will be prepared by the project co-ordinator in collaboration with WP leaders.

Task 1 Project co-ordination
Task 2 Kick-off meeting
Task 3 Writing of the three progress reports
Task 4 Mid-term meeting
Task 5 Writing of interim report
Task 6 Final meeting
Task 7 Writing of final report

WP2:Definition of fuel poverty

Fuel Poverty is an issue that is still poorly defined. It covers situations of lack of comfort or financial difficulties linked with energy consumption within housing. Lack of access to essential supplies of energy can endanger life or health. Even if social workers understand the social, economic or environmental health problems there are very few projects that have defined and analysed fuel poverty in Europe. Therefore, the objectives for this first work package are to :

• Identify and analyse situations of fuel poverty using national studies in the partner countries, (France, Italy, United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium) This comparative approach will enable the consortium to define what is meant by fuel poverty and to propose a framework for action.
• Define the potential causes which contribute to the development of fuel poverty situations, including the energy efficiency of homes.

Task 1 Sociological analysis of fuel poverty situation in each country
Task 2 Definition of fuel poverty
Task 3 Indicators to evaluate fuel poverty
Task 4 Evaluation of fuel poverty in each partners’ Country
Task 5 Writing up the workpackage report

WP3:State of art in campaigns against Fuel Poverty

Governments are ultimately responsible for setting and achieving social policy goals and, consequently, most actions to address fuel poverty will originate with central government. These actions will include initiatives taken directly by government; work undertaken by agencies appointed by government with a specific fuel poverty remit; and other work carried out by third parties as a result of government exhortation and encouragement. However, there is also a role for non-government, independent agencies to monitor government activity and to make informed and objective comment on how effective policy is and how it might be improved. The objectives of this work package are:

• To identify mechanisms (legislative, financial, technical, etc…) that are relevant to fuel poverty prevention or alleviation
• To identify and analyse the stakeholders, both statutory and non-statutory, that are key participants in protecting low-income and other vulnerable households against fuel poverty.

Task 1 Analysis of existing mechanisms
Task 2 Analysis of fuel poverty infrastructures
Task 3 Writing up the workpackage report

WP4: Analysis and elaboration of instruments

In Work package 3, we have identified instruments (legislative, financial, technical,…) existing in European countries to tackle fuel poverty. In this work package the objectives is to identify best practices and to create or to adapt mechanism.
Some common moment will be a possibility to compare different strategies in act, but not only. It will be possible to understand some lack of policy. To achieve this aim it will be organised workshops in each country.

Each of the 5 partner countries will contribute :

• to identify and analyse best practices to tackle fuel poverty and to identify non technical barriers to tackle fuel poverty ;
• to define mechanisms adapted to each national energy context;
• to organize some workshop, at different scale (national, European), to compare each experience, to favourite the individualition of new instruments, and finally to contribute to underline this problem at a European level.

Task 1 Identification of best practices
Task 2 Workshop and first plenary meeting
Task 3 Organisation of 3 national workshops
Task 4 Definition of new mechanisms to tackle fuel poverty
Task 5 Organisation of an European workshop
Task 6 Writing up the workpackage report

WP5: Establishment of recommendations

Previous Work Packages will have been done the analysis of fuel poverty in each partner country:

• Work Package 2 will have allowed a definition of fuel poverty
• Work Package 3 will have allowed the state of the art in existing campaigns against fuel poverty and the different actors involved on them
• Work Package 4 will have allowed the identification of the set of instruments existing at different levels in the EU countries.

The objective is to help decision makers at local, national and European level to implement the necessary policies to tackle the problem of fuel poverty (covering the energy needs, increasing the quality of life and reducing greenhouse gases emissions). To attend this objective, we will publish in different languages :

• a list of recommendations addressed to each group of key actors
• a series of good practice cards.

Task 1: Organisation of the workshop and the second plenary meeting
Task 2: Practical recommendations addressed to European decision makers
Task 3: Practical recommendations addressed to National and local decision makers
Task 4: Edition of the guides (European recommendations guide + National best practices)
Task 5 Writing up the workpackage

WP6: Actions at a local level

During the previous Work packages, the consortium elaborated :

• a common definition of fuel poverty,
• tools to identify problems and stakeholders,
• good practices,
  

Existing measures (legislative, financial, technical, etc…) to reduce fuel poverty are often taken in the field of reducing the price of energy for people who have financial difficulties; resumption of debt near the distributors; information, council about energy efficiency; financing of minor improvements on the energy quality of housing.
However, the fundamentals needs are the improvement of the energy performance and the comfort of the buildings.
As indicated before, the situations are very different from case to case in the countries represented in the consortium. In UK, lot of local actions have already been implemented. In France, there are various situations but in Paris, for example, tackling fuel poverty is not implemented yet, though municipality intends to work on these problems. In Italy an act of the national Authority for Energy exists and it foresees the opportunity for each local Authority to ask local energy distribution Enterprise a percentage rate of energy bills to collect funds dedicated to tackle fuel poverty.

WP7: Dissemination

The aim of this work package is to convince decision makers, stakeholders that there are scopes to set up “fuel poverty programs” and that they can act within their territories, institutions, companies to both increase households quality of life and reduce greenhouse gases emissions.

In order to reach this objective we will organise seminar, publish articles and disseminate the different guides and reports produced during the project.

Task 1 Dedicated Website
Task 2 Organisation of an European seminar
Task 3 Organisation of national Seminars
Task 4 Dissemination of guides and reports
Task 5 Writing of the work package report

WP8: Common dissemination activities

The work package covers resources to contribute, upon request by the IEEA, to common dissemination activities shared by the IEE projects in order to increase senoritas amongst the projects and visibility of the project results.

• Task 1: Contribution to the development of on line information systems under IEEA management (e.g. project fact sheets, reports, slides, electronic deliverables, images) in the quality and form specified
• Task 2: Participation and/or contribution, to information and dissemination events (contractors’ workshops, conferences, briefing days, exhibitions, etc.) related to Intelligent Energy – Europe or other relevant EU programmes
• Task 3: Contribution to the preparation of common presentation material related to IEE actions, like the “Intelligent Energy News” newsletter and other printable or audiovisual media developed by the IEEA