Use Case 2: Reducing Energy Poverty and Ensuring Summer Comfort
Target Users
Engineers, researchers, municipalities, NGOs, and civil society.
User Story Description
The transformations of the space cooling (SC) sector, its strategic planning, and more SC interventions can strongly contribute to reducing energy poverty, for example, by proposing strategies to provide all households with solutions to ensure decent summer comfort. There is also an increasing need for data to calculate energy needs, gaps, retrofit requirements, and other factors to reduce energy poverty.
Research Question
How can space cooling interventions be designed and implemented to reduce energy poverty while ensuring equitable access to summer comfort for all households, particularly in vulnerable communities?
Calculation Module Use and Order
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Economic Feasibility: Addressing energy poverty requires a thorough understanding of the financial constraints households face in accessing cooling solutions. The Economic Feasibility Calculation Module enables users to assess the affordability of different cooling interventions at both the national and building archetype levels. By comparing the costs of passive and active cooling technologies across different scenarios, this module helps planners and policymakers identify the most cost-effective measures to improve energy efficiency while ensuring that cooling solutions remain accessible to low-income households. This analysis is critical in designing policies and financial support mechanisms that can enhance cooling affordability without exacerbating economic burdens.
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Comfort, Lifestyle, and User Behavior: Ensuring summer comfort for all households, particularly those at risk of energy poverty, requires an understanding of how people interact with cooling technologies and what factors influence their cooling demand. The Comfort, Lifestyle, and User Behavior Calculation Module provides insights into typical summer thermal comfort requirements, household cooling behaviors, and adaptive practices that can reduce energy demand. This module helps users identify behavioral interventions and cooling strategies that can improve comfort without excessive energy consumption, such as the promotion of shading, natural ventilation, and efficient cooling habits. Understanding these behavioral patterns supports the design of targeted awareness programs and community-based cooling initiatives that empower households to manage their cooling needs effectively.
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Legal and Regulatory Layers: Policies and regulations play a critical role in shaping access to affordable cooling solutions, particularly for vulnerable populations. The Legal and Regulatory Layers Calculation Module provides an overview of EU and national legislation, building codes, and policies that impact space cooling affordability and access. By mapping out relevant policy frameworks, this module allows users to identify regulatory barriers and opportunities for improving cooling access. It also helps in assessing whether national and local policies provide adequate support for energy-poor households, ensuring that legal frameworks align with equitable cooling access objectives.
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Financial Instruments: Expanding access to cooling solutions for energy-poor households requires appropriate financial mechanisms. The Financial Instruments Calculation Module enables users to explore funding opportunities and financial support schemes that can facilitate the adoption of efficient cooling technologies. By filtering funding sources at the national and EU levels, users can identify grants, subsidies, or low-interest loans that can make energy-efficient cooling solutions more affordable for low-income households. This module ensures that financial barriers are addressed and that appropriate funding channels are leveraged to support vulnerable communities.
By systematically applying these calculation modules, policymakers, engineers, and social organizations can design effective space cooling interventions that address energy poverty while ensuring equitable summer comfort. The combination of economic feasibility assessment, behavioral analysis, regulatory framework mapping, and financial instrument identification enables the development of targeted, cost-effective strategies that improve access to cooling without increasing financial burdens. This structured approach ensures that space cooling contributes to long-term energy equity and resilience in vulnerable communities.
How To Cite
Aadit Malla, in CoolLIFE-Wiki, User Story 2: Reducing Energy Poverty and Ensuring Summer Comfort
Authors And Reviewers
This page was written by Aadit Malla EEG-TU WIEN.
This page was reviewed by Ardak Akhatova e-think.
License
Copyright © 2024-2025: Aadit Malla
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 International License.
SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
License-Text: https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html
Acknowledgement
We would like to convey our deepest appreciation to the LIFE Programme CoolLIFE Project (Grant Agreement number 101075405), which co-funded the present investigation.