Energy poverty is a common issue in social housing all over Europe, with a harder impact in Southern European countries. Social housing buildings play an important role in energy poverty. They are usually owned and managed by public institutions and usually share common characteristics and issues. Behavioural changes and energy retrofitting are interesting paths forward but some solutions do not fit well in this type of housing due to socioeconomic reasons. This paper makes a thorough analysis of possible energy efficiency measures in social housing buildings, characterizing them by energy and economic savings and investment and proposing different methods of prioritization. A rational approach of behavioural and retrofitting solutions that best fit into this particular housing type is delivered, with the aim to increase the thermal comfort of the residents and mitigate the energy poverty issue. Results show that there is a wide range of domestic efficiency measures to be applied in this type of dwellings at none or low costs, bringing annual savings per average dwelling of about 510 €/year (55% of initial energy costs) including measures both at domestic level, and at building level with a final aggregated payback of the investments to be about 1.5 years.

In Europe, the proportion of social housing is high, and such houses tend to be inhabited by below average-income households, which are particularly vulnerable to energy poverty. This article proposes a new methodological approach for defining an index for household energy vulnerability assessment. This method can be used to improve the management of social housing. After establishing a heuristic framework for household energy poverty–which stems from different causes such as income, the characteristics of the residence, energy installations, and the energy-consumption habits of household members–multi-criteria analytical methods, based on the aggregation of indicators which reveal the conditions leading to energy poverty, have been applied, and effective means of intervention are proposed. The method is also applied to a sample of social houses and thus validated as a useful tool in decision-making processes which concern the management of social housing from a household energy-poverty perspective.

The market of energy services for the residential sector in Europe is very limited at present. Various reasons can be argued such as the high transaction costs in a highly fragmented market and the low energy consumption per dwelling. The rather long payback time for investments render Energy Services Companies’ (ESCOs) services financially unattractive for many ESCOs and building residents, thus hindering a large potential of energy savings in a sector that is responsible of almost half of Europe’s energy consumption. If the ambitious 2030 and 2050’s decarbonisation targets are to be met, the EU’s residential sector must be part of the solution. This paper offers insights about novel ESCO business models based on intensive data-driven Artificial Intelligence algorithms and analytics that enable the deployment of smart energy services in the domestic sector under a Pay-for-Performance (P4P) approach. The combination of different sources of energy efficiency services and the optimal participation of domestic consumers in aggregated demand response (DR) schemes open the door to new revenue streams for energy service providers and building residents and reduce the hitherto long payback periods of ESCOs services in the sector. Innovative business models for ESCOs and demand flexibility Aggregators are thoroughly described. Especially customised Performance Measurement and Verification protocols enable fair and transparent P4P ESCO contracts. The new human-centric energy and non-energy services increase the energy consumption awareness of building users and deploy behavioural and automated responses to both environmental and market signals to maximise the economic benefit for both energy service providers and consumers, always respecting data protection rules and the consumers’ comfort preferences. The new hybrid business models of P4P energy services make traditional EPC more attractive to energy service providers, with low cost data collection and treatment systems to bring payback periods below 10 years in the residential building sector.

The actual energy consumption and simulated energy performance of a building usually differ. This gap widens in social housing, owing to the characteristics of these buildings and the consumption patterns of economically vulnerable households affected by energy poverty. The aim of this work is to characterise the energy poverty of the households that are representative of those residing in social housing, specifically in blocks of apartments in Southern Europe. The main variables that affect energy consumption and costs are analysed, and the models developed for software energy-performance simulations (which are applied to predict energy consumption in social housing) are validated against actual energy-consumption values. The results demonstrate that this type of household usually lives in surroundings at a temperature below the average thermal comfort level. We have taken into account that a standard thermal comfort level may lead to significant differences between computer-aided energy building simulation and actual consumption data (which are 40–140% lower than simulated consumption). This fact is of integral importance, as we use computer simulation to predict building energy performance in social housing.