Final Report Summary - EVALUATE (Energy Vulnerability and Urban Transitions in Europe) The Energy Vulnerability and Urban Transitions in Europe (EVALUATE) aims to investigate the manner in which urban institutional structures, built tissues and everyday practices shape energy poverty (the inability to secure adequate levels of energys services in the home) at a variety of geographical scales. EVALUATE uses a novel conceptual framing – energy vulnerability – to explore how fuel poverty and domestic energy deprivation affect households and communities over prolonged periods of time, and in relation to existing structures of political and economic power. Providing people with the energy services that they need, according to one of the key premises of the project, is just as much a question of ensuring an adequate match between housing types, heating systems and household needs, as it is about incomes and energy efficiency. As such, the project aims to generate a conceptual shift in the mainstream theorisation of energy poverty, away from the present focus on poverty, access and energy efficiency, onto more complex and nuanced issues of household resilience, precariousness and political recognition. Alongside theoretical and policy innovations, the EVALUATE project is aimed at advancing the state of the art in energy poverty methodology, by providing the first comprehensive investigation of the numerous social and spatial dimensions of energy poverty in the grain of the city. Central and Eastern European cities are the project’s primary research site, due to their unique combination of cold climates, higher-than-average rates of inefficient housing, inadequately developed and/or decaying infrastructure, large income differentials and economic/political restructuring issues. Peer-reviewed publications resulting from EVALUATE are redefining the state of the art in energy vulnerability research. Inter alia, the project laid the basis for the foundation of the new European Union Energy Poverty Observatory.
