Freezing in paradise: Portugal’s energy poverty problem

 

Freezing in paradise: Portugal’s energy poverty problem

Each year millions struggle to survive frigid winter weather in drafty homes.

A construction boom spurred by mass urban migration during the latter half of the 20th century resulted in housing stock built without proper thermal insulation

 

BY AITOR HERNÁNDEZ-MORALES

February 10, 2021 3:58 pm

https://www.politico.eu/article/freezing-in-paradise-portugals-energy-poverty-problem/

 

Portugal is famous for its mild climate and sunny beaches, but each year hundreds of people freeze to death and millions more struggle to survive frigid winter weather.

 

The collective misery is directly attributable to cheap housing stock that is ill-equipped to keep residents warm when temperatures dip. According to data collected by Eurostat, nearly one-fifth of Portugal's 10 million citizens admit to being unable to keep their homes adequately warmed, far more than the average 6.9 percent of the EU population that suffers from the same dilemma.

 

"Portugal is one of the EU countries with the greatest number of people who suffer from energy poverty," said João Pedro Gouveia, lead researcher at Nova University Lisbon's Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research. "People either spend huge portions of their money paying for heat, or adapt to the situation by going without it and wearing coats, hats and gloves indoors, living in conditions that people in the rest of Europe wouldn't tolerate in this day and age."

 

Goveia said a construction boom spurred by mass urban migration during the latter half of the 20th century resulted in housing stock built without proper thermal insulation — something only incorporated into the country's building codes in the 1990s.

 

"As a result of this, approximately 75 percent of the 1.5 million buildings in Portugal that have energy efficiency certificates don't meet the required guidelines for warmth," Gouveia said. "We expect that the two-thirds of the building stock that remains uncertified is actually much, much worse."

 

Portugal has some of the highest electricity prices in the bloc — 21 cents per kilowatt-hour, including fees and taxes — and the eighth-highest natural gas prices in the EU — 6 cents per kWh — which makes heating inefficient homes an out-of-reach luxury for many in a country where the average monthly salary is just €970.

 

"In well-insulated homes in Northern Europe one barely has to run the radiator to keep warm, but living comfortably in poorly built homes here requires keeping oil or electric radiators running all day," said Francisco Ferreira, president of Zero, a Portuguese environmental NGO. "When we had a cold snap in January people easily racked up bills of over €240 a month just to have one 200-watt radiator running."

 

It's also causing Portugal problems in reaching its climate objectives.

 

"We know that a huge part of Europe's emissions come from buildings with poor energy efficiency standards, and this is especially clear in these homes where energy is constantly going to waste," Ferreira said. "It's going to take a lot to change that situation in Portugal."

 

Insufficient aid

Brussels has attempted to tackle energy inefficiency throughout the bloc with a series of policy revisions and new strategies.

 

Performance guidelines were revised in the 2018 Clean Energy for All Europeans package, and ambitious goals to upgrade building stock were laid out in last year's Renovation Wave Strategy, which also included recommendations aimed at improving the lives of the 34 million Europeans who can't afford to adequately heat their homes.

 

In Portugal, after decades of institutional indifference, Prime Minister António Costa's government has also taken steps to address the issue with automatic discounts applied to low-income residents' electricity and gas bills. New legislation includes a plan to invest €300 million a year in boosting building insulation with the aim of renovating 69 percent of the country's building stock by 2050.

 

But experts say that those measures are unlikely to make a serious difference for nearly 2 million Portuguese citizens exposed to extreme cold in their homes every year.

 

"This isn't really a problem you can solve with discounts because in many cases no amount of energy expense will address the issue," said Aline Guerreiro, CEO of the Sustainable Construction Portal, an initiative that promotes best practices in energy-efficient construction in Portugal. "The investment strategies are also unlikely to make a dent because they're co-financed projects, meaning homeowners would have to invest cash they don't have in the renovation schemes."

 

"You have to replace thin, aluminum-framed windows, redo roofs, insulate walls ... We're talking about sums of money that would make it difficult for most Portuguese families to afford," she said. "Getting the residents of an entire building to agree to spend that sum is unthinkable."

 

Guerreiro added that renovation wouldn't even be a realistic option for many buildings where it would cost more to make them energy efficient than to rebuild them from scratch.

 

According to the draft version of Lisbon's upcoming national strategy on energy poverty, which is slated to be released later this year, ending energy poverty in Portugal within 20 years would cost nearly €8 billion, a sum which Zero's Ferreira said is "impossible for the government to assume." The country has been battered by the pandemic, sending its public debt soaring.

 

He's worried that the effort won't do much to help the poorest and most vulnerable.

 

"Let's be honest, the way the current measures are set out the only people who will be able to take advantage of it are the ones with money who are renovating buildings to turn them into luxury rental spaces," Ferreira said.

 

Looking to the past

Nova University Lisbon's Gouveia said that upcoming schemes should explain that the expense of insulating homes would be repaid with much lower heating prices.

 

"It would also make sense for the government to use this opportunity to bet hard on renewable energy and incorporate solar panels on the roofs of all renovated buildings," he said.

 

 

For her part, Guerreiro said she hoped that future renovation and construction efforts would serve to recover traditional architectural solutions used by previous generations.

 

"Traditional houses in the Alentejo region used to be one-story homes with thick walls and small windows that helped pack in the heat in winter and keep occupants cool during summer heatwaves," she said. "In the north, rural houses were designed to take advantage of the heat released by animals, and even the apartment blocks built during the Estado Novo dictatorship were laid out to distribute the heat emanating from the kitchen."

 

"We're suffering the consequences of decades of cheap materials, imported architectural styles and building projects that ignored natural surroundings and climate conditions," she said. "We would do well to recover some of the empirical knowledge of the past while building a more sustainable future."

 

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