On 16 September, the Energy Poverty Advisory Hub (EPAH) held its 25th Lunch Talk, “Health, heatwaves and summer energy poverty: From indicators to local responses”, bringing together 101 participants to explore the growing relevance of summer energy poverty across Europe.

Moderated by João Pedro Gouveia (NOVA FCT | EPAH Team), the session combined recent EPAH work on energy poverty measurement with evidence from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and practical experience from the Municipality of Maribor, Slovenia.

The presentations and discussion highlighted a common message: energy poverty can no longer be approached primarily as a winter issue. Rising temperatures and associated cooling needs are adding new dimensions of vulnerability, while interacting with existing inequalities related to income, housing conditions and health.

João Pedro Gouveia presented the recent EPAH publication “Expanding Energy Poverty Measurement in the EU: Integrating New Climate, Health, and Mobility Indicators”, which broadens energy poverty measurement by incorporating additional climate, health, housing and mobility-related dimensions.

The revised framework updated five existing indicators and introduced nine new indicators, including summer excess mortality, heat-stress, and cold-stress days, indicators related to dwelling energy efficiency, poverty risk, and transport. The EPAH framework now includes more than 35 indicators, spanning areas including climate, building stock, socio-economic conditions and mobility and transport.

The report also examines how different indicators interact. A cross-country analysis covering 17 Member States combined climate and health indicators with indicators linked to the Energy Efficiency Directive. Among the relationships highlighted, countries with more heat-stress days tended to show higher shares of people living in dwellings with structural deficiencies, reinforcing the importance of considering climate exposure alongside housing conditions and socio-economic vulnerability.

Dr. Gouveia stressed that summer energy poverty is becoming increasingly relevant and that energy poverty needs to be understood as a multidimensional and year-round issue.

Johan Carlsson (European Commission’s Joint Research Centre) presented findings from the JRC report "Addressing Residential Cooling Demand and Summer Energy Poverty in the EU - Towards a Cooler Future."

Cooling degree days in the EU increased from around 38 in 1979 to 117 in 2024, while JRC modelling indicates that residential space-cooling demand could double by 2050.

Drawing on EU-SILC data collected in 2023, the study found that 26% of EU households were unable to keep their homes comfortably cool during the summer of 2022. The share reached 34.8% among households in the lowest income quintile, compared with 17.9% in the highest. This shows that low-income households are particularly exposed, while also indicating that income alone does not explain summer thermal discomfort, with building characteristics and climate conditions also playing a role.

The analysis also showed a strong overlap between winter and summer vulnerability: 57.5% of households unable to keep their homes adequately warm in winter also reported difficulties keeping them cool in summer.

The JRC estimated total EU residential cooling demand at around 140 TWh in 2024, with approximately 31 TWh remaining unmet. Dr. Carlsson therefore stressed that improving thermal comfort should not only rely on additional air conditioning. Building upgrades, passive cooling, shading, behavioural measures and efficient cooling technologies all have a role to play, alongside more systematic integration of cooling into energy poverty frameworks and improved data collection.

Gordana Kolesarič (Municipality of Maribor) presented the city’s experience through the Ready4Heat project. Maribor has around 114 000 inhabitants and is facing increasing heat stress, more frequent tropical nights and a projected doubling of the number of hot days. The city used heat maps, together with information on vulnerable infrastructure such as healthcare centres, elderly homes, schools and kindergartens, to identify areas where heat exposure and vulnerability overlap.

Maribor's Strategy and Heat-Health Action Plan, adopted by the City Council in January 2025, combines public health guidance, awareness raising, spatial planning, urban greening and building-related measures.

Actions include information and training for vulnerable groups, a heat-warning SMS system, stronger coordination between municipal departments, and practical greening measures. Ready4Heat also supported nature-based cooling pilots in kindergartens, where grapevine and kiwi seedlings were planted to shade playgrounds.

Ms. Kolesarič stressed that implementation depends not only on having a plan, but also on political prioritisation, public engagement and cooperation across municipal departments.

The open discussion focused on the practical challenges of translating evidence into measures that reach people most exposed to extreme temperatures.

Participants raised questions about prioritisation and funding, particularly for low-income residents and social housing. Ms. Kolesarič highlighted the importance of political leadership and coordination across municipal departments, while Dr. Carlsson pointed to the split-incentive problem in rented housing, where landlords may have limited incentives to invest in measures that primarily benefit tenants.

The discussion also returned to data and targeting. Dr. Gouveia noted that information on summer vulnerability remains less consistently available than data on winter energy poverty, especially below national level. Combining information on income, building performance and heat exposure could improve local targeting, but fragmented datasets and data-protection requirements remain important barriers.

A final point concerned the need to consider year-round thermal comfort. Measures designed to improve summer conditions must also take winter performance into account. As Dr. Gouveia noted in closing, buildings do not change between summer and winter, and policies therefore need to address both forms of vulnerability.

The 25th EPAH Lunch Talk highlighted the need to connect better measurement, stronger evidence and practical local action. As summer vulnerability becomes more prominent across Europe, energy poverty responses will increasingly need to support safe and affordable thermal comfort throughout the year, combining better data, improvements to the building stock and locally adapted measures without unnecessarily increasing energy demand and emissions.