Portugal's poorly insulated homes waste energy

Paul Rees 20 February 2019

oporto There are three countries in Eastern Europe are worse off than Portugal when it comes to energy poverty, according to a European study that evaluated the ability of households to keep their homes at comfortable temperatures and pay the energy bills.

Using Eurostat data, the Coalition for the Right to Energy, to which Portugal's ZERO association belongs, concluded that there are 41 million households in the 28 European Union countries that can not be heated in winter and 91 million they can not be cooled in the summer.

ZERO points the finger at the "inaction of policy makers,” calling for "a European programme to improve thermal insulation and energy efficiency of buildings," so that energy bills fall.

Portugal, classified in the ranking as, "very high" is one of the worst European countries in terms of energy poverty, "because of low incomes, inefficient buildings without insulation and with single glazed windows, inefficient equipment such as fireplaces and individual heaters," says ZERO.

"High costs" mean that little energy is expended to heat and cool houses, the association says, calling on the government to pledge, "simplified support to safeguard people in the most vulnerable socio-economic conditions."

Even worse off than Portugal are Slovenia, Hungary and Bulgaria with Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Austria having the best rankings.

In homes where a comfortable temperature can not be attained, people live with, higher levels of stress and anxiety and health complications are amplified.

Small children living in cold and humid homes are more than twice as likely to suffer from respiratory problems and have a 40% chance of suffering from asthma, the study reports.

Also of deep concern is that the lack of decent heating systems is 40% of the uplift in the death rate during the winter.

There are problems in the summertime too, “as higher temperatures are expected to be more frequent, the scale of the European Union's population affected by summer energy poverty is expected to rise dramatically."

Comments

0 #3 Boris H 2019-02-25 20:51

There should be an amnesty, but there should not be any once-off fee. The government is collecting revenue for these buildings and should not charge again, they need to sort out this problem.
The first thing that could be done is find out how many homes are in this bracket and then assess which houses are straight forward for planning permission and this is sorted, it's a good achievement for a goverment, particularly during elections year.

0 #2 Mike Henshawe 2019-02-23 19:56

It is correct that there were houses constructed in the 1970s early 1980s that did not have planing permission as the government at the time turned a blind eye to the buildings. It would benefit the housing shortage around cities in Portugal if the government held an amnesty to allow these properties to be given legal status for a once off fee per sq mt.

-2 #1 Malcolm.H 2019-02-21 08:24

It was always stunning stupidity for the Portuguese to embark on a furious nationwide 'house' building expansion programme in the 1980's that intentionally sought to avoid the higher building standards that it was known the EU would 'soon' be enforcing. Correction - 'soon' attempting to enforce as we can see in this report. Those not yet finalised before the new building regulations of the early 1990's then being sold on to so many thousands of us unsuspecting north Europeans as 'projects'. Many with inadequate or nonexistent permissions to even exist that have still not been settled - so the owner still blissfully unaware today that, for example, the relevant Ministry never permitted their original building work. As with southern Spain - a time bomb still awaiting explosion.

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