One in five people in the EU cannot heat their homes in winter. Italy among the last for energy efficiency

Brussels – When looking at data published by Eurostat on the energy efficiency of homes, one can see the glass as half empty or half full. The good news is that 25.5 percent of Europeans have benefited from improved energy efficiency in the past five years. However, 18 percent, nearly one in every five Europeans, lived in homes that were “not comfortably warm” during the past winter.

The survey by the Office for Statistics of the EU analyzes the inertia that European institutions have managed to impose on the energy renovation of buildings in member states, one of the pillars of the ‘Fit for 55’ climate package, as seen in the revision of the Energy Efficiency Directive that the EU approved in July 2023. Eurostat considers various repairs that families undertook or that external parties facilitated: improving the thermal insulation of exterior walls, roofs, or floors, replacing single-glazed windows with double- or triple-glazed units, or installing more efficient heating systems.

In terms of inclusiveness and accessibility of the route, which is still not guaranteed, the survey found people at risk of poverty or social exclusion were less likely to report living in dwellings with improved energy efficiency (17.8%) compared with those not at risk (27.5%).

The same holds at the other extreme, those who spent last winter chattering their teeth: 31.2 percent of those at risk of poverty lived in housing that was not comfortably warm, compared to 14.4 percent of those not at risk. The economic variable is the most significant discriminator but not the only one. Energy efficiency goes faster in the countryside: 29.4 percent of rural residents have improved the energy performance of their properties in the past five years, compared to 22.9 percent of those living in large cities.

The survey once again captures a two-speed Europe: while in the Netherlands, 58.7 percent of citizens have improved the energy efficiency of their homes — followed by Estonia (46.6 percent) and Latvia (36.7 percent)– the Mediterranean countries lag. Malta has only 8.4 percent, Greece 11.9 percent, Cyprus and Spain 14.6 percent, and Italy 14.7 percent.
In Italy, the gap between those at risk of poverty and social exclusion and those who are not is significant: only 6.9 percent of the most fragile Italian households have renovated their property from an energy point of view in the last five years. Only Malta (6.7 percent) and Cyprus (5 percent) fared worse. Moreover, in Italy, compared to the general trend in EU countries, improvement rates are higher in cities than in rural areas, reaching 15.5 percent.