The present work aims to describe and analyze the results of the interventions carried out in the Barcelona pilot site of the EmpowerMed project. The overall objective of EmpowerMed is to tackle energy poverty and to help improve the health of people in coastal areas of Mediterranean countries, with a particular focus on women. The main support approach implemented in Barcelona is Collective Advisory Assemblies (CAA), in the framework of Alliance against Energy Poverty. CAA is an innovative, collaborative empowering engagement tool that offers an alternative to the more traditional one-off individual household advice and support approaches. CAAs take place together with a monitoring campaign where: electricity consumption is analyzed to optimize the supply contracts, and indoor environmental comfort to provide recommendations for wellbeing improvement. Through the different approaches, a characterization of the people that have participated in the Barcelona pilot site was completed, from a socioeconomic, energy, thermal comfort and air quality perspective. Additionally, it was compared with a group of energy poverty non-affected households, which are involved in the monitoring campaign. Finally, the impact was quantified in terms of empowerment of energy poverty population and, potential economic savings.

It is proven that children experience specific impacts on their mental and physical health as well as their educational attainment as a result of living in energy poverty. International guidelines and requirements underline the right of every child to an adequate standard of living and the need for all policy to take children into account. This paper aims to understand the extent to which energy policies target children in energy poverty and acknowledge their differential needs and impacts. The paper is based on a study of EU-SILC data and the analysis of policy documents across the 28 countries that by the end of 2019 formed the European Union. The analysis reveals how energy policies mostly consider children only within the context of their families, tending to provide greater support to larger families, while data suggests single parent families are at higher risk of energy poverty. Generally, children tend to be seen as passive subjects in energy policy, are not involved in its development, and their own perspectives and needs are neglected.