A community project to fight the energy poverty in the social housing of Brussels
Context
ElectriEfficiency is a project resulting from a participatory and citizen initiative launched between 2019 and 2021. It has been supported by Bruxelles Environnement and Energy4commons as part of the Inspirons le quartier program.
Without good insulation, an efficient and economical boiler, without high-performance household appliances, households pay too much without knowing the well-being they deserve. Thus, they fall into the trap of fuel poverty.
Goals
ElectriEfficiency sought to optimize the energy consumption of homes in the Vandeuren / Volta district of Ixelles (South Brussels). To do this, ElectriEfficiency has identified and assessed the socio-economic, technical and institutional factors that increase the budget of the households concerned.
Thus, the project sought in particular:
- Develop an energy consumption profile of participating households by collecting data such as: How and how much energy do they consume? How much of the household’s general budget represents energy expenditure?
- Evaluate what collective and technical measures can be put in place to reduce household energy consumption expenditure.
- Establish a participatory project to complete the recommended collective solutions and measures.
- Implement and evaluate the solutions realized, in order to obtain experience feedback that allows us to reproduce the project on a municipal and then regional scale.
Actions
To achieve these objectives we have implemented:
- The Volta barometer. A sociological survey to establish the socio-economic and energy profile of the inhabitants of the Boondael district.
- Workshops on the theme of energy. These workshops aim to answer our questions about energy and to further increase our mastery of all aspects of energy in our daily lives. The subjects are chosen together according to the requests and interests of the participants.
- The Volta Bike. A bicycle that generates electricity from the recycling and reuse of old materials. The Volta Bike is made up of 70% of recovered elements, including the battery with which we store the electricity produced by the pedal.
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