Energetic Upgrade of Buildings in Italy: The ELIHMED Project

Low-income families can get a more comfortable living place and 20% cheaper electric energy bills. Council houses account for about 40% of all the dwellings in the six Mediterranean countries involved in the project.

Higher energy efficiency with average energy bills 20% cheaper: these are the outcomes of EU project ELIHMED, coordinated by ENEA, providing for the energetic upgrade of approximately 100 council houses in Italy, with a mean investment lower than € 20,000 per dwelling.

Typical interventions consisted in, depending on each case, ceiling insulation and the installation of: new frames, more efficient boilers, solar panels for hot water production, photovoltaic panels for energy production and heat pumps for winter and summer air conditioning.

Specifically targeted at getting much more comfortable and energy-efficient dwellings for low-income families living in six Mediterranean countries –namely, Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Ciprus, and Malta)–, the three-year project ELIHMED (Energy Efficiency in Low Income Housing in the Mediterranean) has just concluded with significant interventions made on approximately 1,000 houses, where tenants often cannot afford energy bills nor the costs to make them more energy-efficient.

In Italy, the buildings object of this test experiment have been farms in Sardinia and council houses in Genoa and Frattamaggiore (Naples).

This project represents a novelty for energy efficiency policies, as it focuses on bottom-up strategies aimed at getting lower consumptions and providing a substantial contribution to meet the needs of poorer families. In addition, creating more energy-efficient low-income houses –which account for about 40% of all the buildings in the Mediterranean area–, significantly contributes to achieving the CO₂ emission reduction as well as the 2020 and 2030 Climate-Energy package targets.

“Elihmed’s success is the evidence that the energetic upgrade of buildings can contribute to promoting a new economic and social vision of residential buildings – says the ENEA researcher Anna Moreno–. Not only is this project instrumental to achieving the EU 20% energy saving target by 2020, but it also has great societal implications ".

For more information on the project: www.elih-med.eu/html

Source: Anna Moreno, Coordinator of ELIHMED project - anna.moreno@enea.it