In 2016, researchers from the Institute of Energy Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, the INGENIO Institute and the energy services cooperative Aeioluz prepared the first map of energy poverty (EP) in Valencia. The document was commissioned by the Renewable Energy and Climate Change Service of the Valencia City Council, interested in having a detailed diagnosis of the depth of the phenomenon in the city.
The study used different indices to measure energy vulnerability and based on these it concluded that energy poverty in the city was then 23.23% of households, 6.62% of which were in a situation of energy poverty due to “exclusively” from energy costs. In 2016, let us remember, there had been no pandemic, with the economic consequences that it entailed, nor a war in Ukraine or subsequent inflation, but it is easy for the percentages to have increased during this time because another of the conclusions of the report was that 15, 08% of the households surveyed were then at risk of falling into poverty if energy costs increased.
And although the year of the report reflects almost a different time, its conclusions were striking enough to activate a pilot program, called “WellBased”, which continues to be developed today and which has already left some certainties about how not being able to assume affects the citizen. current expenses.
In Valencia, it has resulted in the creation of a “Citizen School for the Right to Energy”, which operates in the neighborhoods of Algirós, Camins al Grau, Poblats Marítims, Benimaclet, Orriols, Torrefiel, Benicalap and Patraix and in which 260 participate homes and 354 residents of Valencia. This in a first survey showed how 65% of the participating households had poor mental health and 30%, a lung condition. During the winter, many homes are regularly left without basic daily needs, such as heating or lighting, and 29% even acknowledged avoiding health care due to its costs.
“At the beginning of the pilot we were recruiting people through different associations, such as the Red Cross or Cáritas, because the Polytechnic study already indicated which were the most vulnerable neighborhoods,” explains Claudia Ferre, I D i technician at Las Naves. and in charge of the project. This is how neighbors arrived, mainly from the maritime districts, to participate in a project that audits the health conditions in their homes.
“For example, their blood pressure is taken, they are given a sleep questionnaire and a team goes to their home to monitor the temperature of their homes, the humidity…”, Ferre details. In some cases, the program’s intervention includes providing them with a LED light bulb kit, reprogramming the water heaters, optimizing their bill or helping them process the social bonus, for example.
These small advances do not save, however, that its participants live with “restlessness” the situation they are experiencing and which they now report in a modest but eloquent presentation that reflects how much it weighs on them. “The inability to pay the bills creates sadness, helplessness, mental illness and can lead to eviction,” reads one of the texts in a work prepared mostly by women, some of them single mothers.
“When it’s cold, everything takes twice as much energy, even getting out of bed because the room is so humid. Sometimes we notice muscle stiffness and pain,” can be read on the panels, displayed since this week at the entrance to the La Polivalent room of the Las Naves de València innovation center. Its programming is part of the Right to Energy week celebrations organized by the City Council with activities, conferences and visits from the Itinerant Energy Office.
They are photographs, some domestic, many of them made by the participants themselves, which are accompanied by reflections and confessions, such as the one that recognizes that “it is hard to ask to pay all pending bills in a deferred manner.” Some texts are part of the workshops held within the program; others, the result of qualitative interviews, “some phrases that marked us and almost all of them are testimonies from the participants,” explains Ferre. The program will end in July and in autumn, they hope, they will have the first conclusions of a program carried out in Valencia as well as in the cities of Edirne (Turkey), Obuda Budapest (Hungary), Leeds (United Kingdom) and Jelgava (Latvia).
