SEPAS service learning project is aimed at raising awareness of the problem of summer energy poverty in southern European countries and reducing heat exposure of the vulnerable population. In the first year of the project, 60 architecture students from the Technical University of Madrid carried out more than 40 workshops. 300 households have participated in these activities on heat and energy culture, energy bills optimization, and outdoor interventions to create climate shelters.
National
Spain
Madrid
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
Horizon2020 / Horizon Europe
LC-SC3-EC-2-2018-2019-2020 - Mitigating household energy poverty
Subcontracting call: H2020-LC-SC3-EE-2020-2
Funding scheme: CSA - Coordination and support action
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Carmen Last name of representative: Sánchez-Guevara Gender: Female Nationality: Spain Function: Lecturer Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Avda. Ramiro de Maeztu, 7 Town: Madrid Postal code: 28040 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34675448646 E-mail:carmen.sanchezguevara@upm.es Website:https://www.upm.es/
The SEPAs (Summer Energy Poverty Agents) Service Learning project presented here is part of the
H2020-Cooltorise project, aimed at raising awareness of the problem of summer energy poverty in southern European countries and reducing the cooling demands of the vulnerable population.
In the first year of the project, more than 60 architecture students from different Technical
Schools of the Community of Madrid, led by the Technical University of Madrid, have had the opportunity to carry out workshops with households suffering from summertime energy poverty.
These workshops were focused on the optimization of energy bills, heat culture, and climate adaptation at different scales, as well as an intervention for the improvement of urban microclimate. The results of the first year pay value the figure of the SEPAs, or Summer Energy Poverty Agents, a technical and accompanying figure that encourages learning among participants and volunteers.
Learning Service
Summer energy poverty
Heat culture
Climate change adaptation
Passive cooling
Despite the great risks associated with climate change for vulnerable households in terms of energy affordability and thermal habitability, energy vulnerability and energy poverty are still topics not included within the formal curricula of Architecture students. The main objective of this Service-Learning project is to raise awareness of summer energy poverty among architecture students. They receive specific training on summer urban micro-climate, and passive cooling strategies, as well as on energy markets and bills. They are also trained in social intervention skills, to be prepared to work with real experiences and collect testimonies of people suffering from summer energy poverty. By conducting different types of workshops, students can generate positive impacts on households by increasing their comfort, mitigating potential health risks, and reducing energy expenditure. More precisely, the project manages two indicators to measure the performance of the activities, that summarize two project objectives. First, a reduction in energy consumption in summer among participants is expected. Secondly, reducing temperatures through an urban outdoor intervention is aimed at three spaces in vulnerable neighborhoods in the city of Madrid.
The initiative presents one of the ways to work with the most vulnerable population to achieve their adaptation to climate change. In this adaptation, the use of sustainable, passive strategies that require little or no energy for their operation is key to their environmental, economic, and social sustainability. This initiative thus becomes a possible model in the global north to carry out the recommendations for adaptation of the population called for in recent IPCC reports.
This project presents innovation in participatory urbanism and architecture specifically focused on overheating conditions that can be useful for a Europe of passively cooled cities. By connecting architectural students and vulnerable households, and by establishing three phases -diagnosis, design, and materialization-, technical knowledge and emotional connections with the urban environment are intertwined, addressing the question of heat in the city from a holistic perspective. This is very important, as heat stress experiences can be counteracted by architectural and urbanistic reconfigurations, but also by users’ habits. Through the urban intervention activity contained in the Service-Learning project, architecture students learn further beyond passive cooling technologies, gaining valuable insights into cultural and social measures that are related to heat mitigation. Design and aesthetics, in this project, are led by affective relations to the space and micro-climate factors.
The main objective of the project is the reduction of summertime energy poverty among households. To achieve this major objective in the short and long term, the project works on the training of architecture students by increasing their awareness of this problem and the need for good, efficient, and passive architectural design. This training of students enables them to carry out workshops with households to improve the habitability of their homes, reduce their energy bills and make interventions in the urban space of their neighborhoods that generate small climatic shelters.
In summary, SEPAS Works to secure the right to energy for summertime energy-poor households.
SEPAS project has already worked with more than 300 households in Madrid and trained 60 architecture students in one year.
- Vulnerable households participating in the activities are benefiting from learning basic strategies to keep cool at home during summer, project is raising their awareness of health impacts related to heat waves and how to reduce their exposure. All these, are aimed at reducing summer energy poverty conditions of vulnerable households.
- A pilot project for the adaptation of urban space in Vallecas (Madrid) has been carried out in collaboration with the neighborhood.
- Architecture students are benefiting from receiving specific training on climate change, energy poverty, and cooling and passive strategies, enhancing their curricula.
- General society will benefit from these future architects that will incorporate adaptation strategies and passive energy efficiency design into their buildings.
At the local level, Madrid's local council has collaborated throughout their social services and has benefited from the project in their elderly centers that have participated in the project. Social workers have increased their knowledge and awareness of heat exposure risks and strategies to stay cool.
At the European level, partners of COOLTORISE project are benefiting from UPM's team initiatives, as an example to develop their own activities in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria
The SEPAS initiative integrates different disciplines in order to achieve the desired positive impact on households in fuel poverty.
Firstly, from the discipline of architecture, provided by the teaching staff and researchers participating in the project, belonging to the School of Architecture. This discipline brings the vision of intervention in housing, the use of energy in the home and the improvement of outdoor microclimatic conditions through urban design.
The Asociación Bienestar y Desarrollo, an NGO participating in the project, incorporates the perspective of intervention on households in vulnerable situations. They provide the necessary knowledge for direct work with households,
This interdisciplinary work adds value to the initiative by providing a more complete and holistic approach to the problem.
This innitiave of SEPAS is being developed under the COOLTORISE project, an H2020 European-funded project which is the first one to be funded specifically focused on summer energy poverty, as traditionally energy poverty has been linked to the problems in accessing heating during winter.
Another key point of innovation in the project is the use of the so-called learning service methodology in the university as SEPAS is training and teaching students to make a service to the community by working in the reduction of summer energy poverty conditions of households participating in the workshops these students conduct.
Third, this project is increasing the public's knowledge of the work carried out at the university. Activities have been carried out in which 100 people have visited the university and have taken part in workshops on heat culture and have been told about the research we carry out there on climate change and how we direct it towards improving the conditions of the population.
The use of the service-learning methodology applied to working with vulnerable populations can be transferred to any other technical qualification, as it broadens the competencies and capacities of future technicians who will have to face the impacts of the current environmental and resource crisis.
This same methodology can be replicated specifically in architectural practices, to improve the competencies of future architects who will have to respond to the specific energy needs of building users.
The knowledge gained in terms of passive strategies to help the population adapt to climate change is transferable and, in fact, needs to be transferred to Northern European countries that will be affected by climate change and have no tradition of heat culture and use of buildings during extreme heat events.
The methodology used in this Project is Service-learning. This methodology integrates the learning of contents, skills and values, and community service in the same educational project, with the aim of "offering a service" directly to society, in order to transform and improve it.
The project trains architecture students to carry out workshops and activities with households living in summer energy poverty. The methodology can be divided into two main blocks: the pedagogical and the intervention.
The intervention methodology consists of developing workshops and activities with vulnerable households to help them reduce their summer energy poverty conditions.
- Workshops on energy and heat culture in which the main strategies for passive use of the home and reduction of heat exposure that households can put into practice are presented.
- Bill optimization bills workshops, reviewing bill charges and contracted tariffs to help households reduce their costs.
- Workshops with children (coolkids) offered in parallel to the activities to promote women's participation in the workshops.
- Distribution of basic heat kits such as fans, sunscreens, cooling towels, energy-saving devices, etc.
- Walks and outdoor intervention workshops (climate shelters) to reduce urban microclimate temperatures.
- A system of heat alerts users of the arrival of extreme heat episodes and transmits in simple and accessible language a series of recommendations to reduce exposure to heat.
- The pedagogical methodology is based on three main axes: Learning by doing, cooperative learning, and problem-based learning.
The main challenge addressed by the SEPAS initiative is the adaptation of the most vulnerable to climate change. According to IPCC reports, climate change is expected to increase the number and frequency of heat waves across the Mediterranean area. As a result, the population with lower income or at risk of poverty is expected to suffer the greatest impacts of rising temperatures, including increased mortality from exposure to heat extremes.
The project focuses on addressing this challenge through small local interventions to improve people's adaptation to climate change. These interventions include awareness-raising workshops on the so-called heat culture through more efficient use of housing by employing passive cooling strategies, optimization of energy bills to improve households' accessibility to the necessary energy, reflection workshops, and intervention on outdoor space to improve urban microclimatic conditions and generate climate shelters. In addition to this battery of local interventions, there is a mobile phone alert system to warn of the arrival of heat waves and establish recommendations to reduce exposure to heat in a simple and accessible language.
In parallel to these local activities, students are expected to acquire specific knowledge that will make them incorporate into their future building designs.
The SEPAS initiative has been running for one year so far and this year we are once again launching a call for students training and workshops with households.
During the first year, 300 households have been reached, helping them to improve their well-being in summer and reducing their exposure to heat. In the second year, the aim is to reach around 200 households. The districts wherein we have deployed the activities are Usera and Vallecas, as these are two of the districts most affected by the urban heat island and where the lowest-income households in the municipality of Madrid live.
Sixty students from the Technical University of Madrid have been trained, mainly from the School of Architecture. This year we expect to train 20 more, as this year we are looking to deepen the training and the level of involvement of the student body.
42 workshops have been held and this year we hope to maintain the same number.
The stages to be followed will replicate those carried out last year:
- Recruitment of volunteers and presentation to neighborhood associations and collaborating entities: February.
- Training of students: February-March
- Workshop development: March-June
- Evaluation of impact on households: September-October.
Within the European Competence Framework on Sustainability, the SEPAS initiative works on the following aspects:
- Within the Embodying sustainability values competence, the Project works on "supporting fairness" given that it works on the recovery of traditional passive conditioning systems in summer, the way our ancestors have used urban and domestic spaces to adapt to the climate through low-consumption techniques.
- With regard to the Embracing complexity and sustainability competition, the initiative aims to develop critical thinking among architecture students, making them understand the impacts on professional architectural work, the difficulties or disadvantages suffered by a certain part of the population and to develop critical solutions to achieve thermal comfort, contrasting the current solutions proposed.
- As for Envisioning sustainable futures, the initiative focuses more on the adaptability of people and communities to climate change and how cities, neighbors and homes will have to change and how collective design is required to achieve this challenge.
- SEPAS is an action-based initiative for sustainability, in particular, outdoor interventions are increasing students' competence to implement collective action through collective co-design and collective interventions that build communities.
