Improving the Social Dialogue for Energy Efficient Social Housing (ISEES)

The purpose of ISEES is to examine the rationality behind the consumers’ choices and the influence of the individual user behaviour on the energy demand in social housing. It will develop solutions to integrate energy efficiency and renewable energy measures in social housing based on a concept using “social dialogue”. The dialogue is targeted at involving all stakeholders – tenants/owners of dwellings, housing associations, municipalities and energy service providers – into the refurbishment process, develop efficient and feasible models of user participation and implement exemplary participation processes in a renovation project.
Furthermore, the project will assess the quality of services provided by utilities and district heating companies, identify shortfalls and lack of management and service capacity leading to high disconnection rates, and provide concrete solutions to overcome this barrier on the way to achieve energy efficient social housing.

Achieved results

• A better understanding of the users’ behaviour, their motivation and their needs for energy services, based on field testing.
• The outline of a model refurbishment process for each participating country where the needs of the occupants are being respected and where tenants/owners are actively involved in the development and realisation of improvement measures.
• Knowledge of the socio-economic rationality that lies behind individual decision-making processes.
• A set of measures developed to improve the situation of tenants/owners regarding energy use, within the given limits, and raise their awareness for realisable measures.
• A set of tools for decision-makers in the housing sector (housing associations, municipalities, planners) and energy utilities (e.g. DH companies) to improve the quality of social housing on the one hand, and energy services on the other hand.

Total cost: 1 194 570 EUR

Coordinator: Andreas Karner, KWI Management Consultants GmbH, Austria

Partners:

• Inter-university Research Centre for Technology, Work and Culture, Austria
• ACE Group, Austria
• Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd. (ESD), United Kingdom
• Cityplan spol. s.r.o., Czech Republic
• Energy Centre Bratislava, Slovak Republic
• Lithuanian Energy Institute, Lithuania
• Sofia Energy Centre, Bulgaria