A collaborative platform to empower local actions against energy poverty

Energy Poverty alleviation measures often require large public investments. However, successfully targeting the beneficiaries can be hard due to the territorial specificity of the issue. Decentralized collective impact ecosystems leveraging on social innovation schemes of public authorities, creating shared value for market actors and ensuring the widest outreach to the voluntary sector would enhance the effectiveness of coping programs. A multi-disciplinary platform to tackle energy poverty composed of academic institutions, private stakeholders and charities is presented in this paper. Charities offer the confidence framework for a “door-to-door” engagement, academic institutions provide technical and socio-economic significance, bridging with the local administration. Profit companies contribute in the context of their CSR/CSV and explore new possible business models. A first project involved 60 households from six cities in North-West Italy. An international-wide do-it-yourself company donated customized kits of energy saving devices, designed in accordance with building energy needs. Inputs are based on site surveys disseminated by charity volunteers, which investigated socio-economic aspects too. Volunteers attended a dedicated educational program on domestic energy appliances, household economy and energy billing beforehand. The first outcomes of the project are presented herewith.