24 / 28
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSFORMATIONS
172
J. PARAVANTIS
a part-time basis or are in debt. Unemployment and growing job insecurity (part-time
employment, short-term jobs) cause many people to live below the poverty threshold.
11
Santamouris et al.
12
reviewed several national and international standards that define
the threshold indoor temperatures required to maintain comfortable conditions in
buildings.
13
Proposed indoor temperatures are between 18 and 21
º
C, varying as a func-
tion of many parameters that regulate thermal comfort. The World Health Organization
proposes 20
º
C for the vulnerable population,
14
while 18
º
C is proposed by Boardman.
15
Various medical sources propose 21
º
C as a minimum temperature for the more vulner-
able population and 18
º
C for sedentary activities and people in good health,
16
while the
WHO proposes minimum temperatures of 16
º
C in bedrooms and 18
º
C in living rooms
for health reasons. The literature review of Santamouris et al.,
17
Santamouris et al.
18
and
Paravantis and Santamouris
19
covered definitions, various issues related to fuel poverty
in Greece, the EU and globally, as well as fuel poverty surveys and methods of analysis.
Among their findings, only three out of the 28 EU member states have officially defined
fuel poverty. Although there is no official Europe-wide definition, the comparison of
fuel poverty among European countries is not trivial.
Fuel poverty is a complex socio-technical problem caused by a combination of physi-
cal, demographic and behavioral characteristics of a household.
20
Factors that have
been found to drive residential energy consumption include: number of household oc-
11. Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
Annual report on fuel poverty statistics 2012
. A
national statistics publication, UK, 2012.
12. M. Santamouris et al., Freezing the poor – indoor environmental quality in low and very low income
households during the winter period in Athens.
Energy and Buildings
, 70, pp. 61-70, 2014.
13. Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers,
Environmental design
, 7th edition issue 2 (incor-
porates corrections - February and September 2006 and 2007, and includes corrigendum - November
2009). London, UK, 2009 - Committee Normalization. Indoor environmental input parameters for de-
sign and assessment of energy performance of buildings addressing indoor air quality, thermal environ-
ment, lighting and acoustics, European Standards and Procedures, 2007.
14. World Health Organisation (WHO). Large analysis and review of European housing and health status
(LARES). WHO Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2009.
15. Boardman, B., Fixing fuel poverty: challenges and solutions. London: Earthscan, 2010.
16. Healy, D. and Clinch, J. P., Fuel poverty in Europe – A cross-country analysis using a new composite
measurement. ESRS 02/04,
Environmental Studies Research Series Working Papers
, Department of
Environmental Studies, University College Dublin, Ireland, 2002.
17. Santamouris, M., Paravantis, J. A., Founda, D., Kolokotsa, D., Michalakakou, P., Papadopoulos, A. M.,
Kontoulis, N., Tzavali, A., Stigka, E. K., Ioannidis, Z., Mehilli, A., Matthiessen, A. and Servou, £., Financial
crisis and energy consumption: A household survey in Greece. Energy and Buildings, 2013, 65, 477-487.
18. Santamouris, M., Alevizos, S. M., Aslanoglou, L., Mantzios, D., Milonas, P., Sarelli, I., Karatasou, S.,
Cartalis, K. and Paravantis, J. A., Freezing the poor – indoor environmental quality in low and very low
income households during the winter period in Athens. Energy and Buildings, 2014, 70, 61-70.
19. Paravantis, J. A. and Santamouris, M., An analysis of indoor temperature measurements in low and
very low income housing in Athens, Greece. Special Issue on Indoor Environmental Quality in Low
Income Housing in Europe of the Journal Advances in Building Energy Research, Taylor and Francis, ac-
cepted for publication, 2015.
20. Kelly, S., Do homes that are more energy efficient consume less energy? A structural equation model of
the English residential sector.
Energy
, 2011, 36, 5610–5620.