How to tackle energy poverty in social housing through energy behaviour-driven strategies

The gap between expected and actual energy consumption in buildings is highly dependent from the human factor. Indeed, energy saving is not only a matter of technology, but it is influenced by the use and the behaviour of occupants. Research has shown that occupants can use three or more times as much energy for heating as their neighbours living in dwellings with similar characteristics. The overall aim of the research is to contribute to the discussion of strategies to address energy poverty through energy renovation of residential buildings. The goal is to show, on the one side, the relevance of the occupant behaviour, at present seldomly included in the consideration of the measures to adopt to renovate the buildings; on the other side, the relationship among stakeholders involved in the renovation process, in order to suggest improvements to improve the effectiveness of the process. Energy poverty is a growing phenomenon particularly prevalent in Italian social housing sector. The great majority of social housing stock refers to public housing for rent, managed by public housing associations, which are responsible for the allocation and maintenance, while the dwellings are mainly owned by the municipalities. Regenerating the social housing stock is a very demanding issue for local authorities, facing increasing management cost due to the obsolete housing stock, and lack of resources to increase energy efficiency to reduce building energy demand. Starting from the occupant behaviour simulation results in a social housing building, some considerations will be formulated to support policy-makers to design effective policy instruments to tackle occupant behaviour and energy poverty in the framework of housing renovation. Poor quality of the built environment, together with high energy costs in the Italian framework, have been found to be the main issues to address when it comes to mitigate energy poverty. Therefore, renovating the existing housing stock emerge to be the measure with the highest impact for reducing housing energy demand, but not always feasible, due to the lack of funds and fragmented property. Embedding behaviour strategies into renovation programmes of the public housing stock might be a fundamental step forward to tackle energy poverty and energy vulnerability, particularly prevalent in the public and social housing sector.