More than 30% of Murcian households cannot meet their basic needs for energy supplies
The Region, Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura are the Spanish regions most affected by energy poverty, as revealed by the latest update of the Long-Term Strategy for Energy Rehabilitation in the Building Sector in Spain ( ERESSE).
This structural phenomenon affects more than 30% of households in these autonomous communities, compared to the 25% on average that suffer from energy or monetary poverty at the national level. On the opposite side are Asturias, the Balearic Islands, Cantabria, Catalonia, Madrid and the Basque Country, where the incidence of households affected by energy or monetary poverty ranges between 12% and 20%.
In this regard, the general director of the Green Building Council Spain (GBCe), Dolores Huerta, has stated that “Spain would have to invest more than 13,000 million euros in the rehabilitation of its building stock to end energy poverty”, on the occasion of the week of the fight against energy poverty, which takes place between February 17 and 23.
In this sense, Huerta highlighted that, as stated in the #BuildingLife project roadmap, “rehabilitation is the most effective and structural long-term solution.” Of that 25% of households in energy or monetary poverty that Spain has on average, 62% of the cases occur in urban areas and more than 60% appear in collective housing.
This implies that decision-making on the execution of works is more common as a collective process, in which the different owners of the property must agree, with their own economic circumstances. According to Huerta, this makes rehabilitation more complex in Spain, which conditions the request and granting of public aid for the rehabilitation of collective housing buildings, or that of loans, since these communities of owners lack their own legal personality. .
Joint effort
According to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, in its National Strategy against Energy Poverty 2019-2024, this is defined as “the situation in which a home finds itself in which basic supply needs cannot be met. as a result of an insufficient level of income and which, where appropriate, may be aggravated by having an energy-inefficient home.
In this sense, the GBCe leader stressed that this rehabilitation strategy “will allow existing buildings to provide the socially necessary habitability in terms of comfort, health and accessibility.”
To achieve this goal, Huerta defended the importance of achieving a joint effort by all the agents involved and, especially, by the property managers: “They are essential because they can act as a link between the sector and the small owners, who represent a large number of citizens,” he explained.
The general director of GBCe has clarified that this is not enough in the case of households that suffer greater vulnerability, which “must be especially supported by the public powers to ensure a fair transition and reduce energy poverty”.