The data revealed by the National Statistics Institute (INE) in the most recent Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) are not very encouraging, with several indicators showing worse results than in previous years.

“The results obtained confirm the deterioration of housing conditions”, says INE, with more and more people living in overcrowded houses and unable to cover the expenses associated with heating and cooling their accommodation. Humidity, poor insulation, lack of natural light and poor sanitary facilities are other problems highlighted.

In 2023, 20.8% of the population did not have the financial capacity to keep their home comfortably warm, which translated into an increase of 3.3 percentage points compared to 2022. According to INE, in 2022, Portugal was already one of the 5 European Union (EU) countries where this inability to maintain thermal comfort at home was highest. The European average stood at 9.3%, while in Portugal the percentage rose almost double at 17.5%.

INE highlights that last year, “26.6% of the population lived in accommodation where no type of heating was used at home, a proportion that was much higher in the Autonomous Regions (86% in the Autonomous Region of Madeira and 72.6% in the Autonomous Region of the Azores) than on the Mainland (24%)”.

In situations of poverty, the proportion of people who lived in accommodation where no type of heating was used at home was higher: 39.7% of the population at risk of poverty reported not using heating at home, which compares with 23.9% of the remaining population.

To these data, we must add the percentage of accommodation that is not adequately cool in summer (38.3%). João Pedro Gouveia, researcher at the Faculty of Science and Technology of Universidade Nova de Lisboa integrated in the research group CENSE (Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research), compares this value with that which occurred a decade ago: “in 2013 it was 34% , where at the time we were already the second worst country in Europe”.

The researcher considers that “what all this demonstrates is that energy efficiency policies in Portugal for residential buildings are not very ambitious and do not promote the integrated and complete renovation of buildings”. Given this scenario, João Pedro Gouveia concludes that, for these results to be reversed, “less comprehensive financing schemes and more focused on worst performing homes (lower energy classes) are needed, promoting deep energy renovations”.