Introduction

Rural energy poverty presents unique challenges that cannot be addressed by policy measures or local action alone. Effective solutions require both top-down support through collaborative governance, accessible funding, and tailored policy frameworks, as well as bottom-up innovation driven by communities and local actors.

Drawing on the experiences of the RENOVERTY project, this article explores how co-creation between these levels can deliver inclusive and sustainable solutions to alleviate rural energy poverty. It showcases how participatory approaches can inform policy design with real-world insights, while higher-level strategies can empower communities with the tools and resources they need to implement energy renovations. 

By bridging the gap between governance structures and grassroots realities, the article highlights pathways for integrating co-created solutions into the wider energy transition of the building sector, ensuring that vulnerable rural populations are not left behind.

The structural challenge of rural energy poverty

Energy poverty in Europe is increasingly recognised as a multidimensional issue that combines economic vulnerability, poor building quality, and limited access to affordable and clean energy sources. Yet, despite widespread recognition, rural and peri-urban communities remain underrepresented in most policy frameworks, particularly in Central, Eastern, and Southern European countries. 

To understand how to reduce the level of energy poverty within rural and peri-urban areas, it is important to first understand the conditions that cause it. RENOVERTY identified that rural areas across Europe face four unique characteristics, which contribute to rural energy poverty. These include unfavourable demographics and ageing populations, limited access to education, fewer employment opportunities, and physical isolation resulting in a lack of infrastructure and access to services.

Furthermore, many rural energy poverty drivers exist, which perpetuate the conditions that lead to the increased exposure of rural citizens to energy poverty, including a typically older and less energy-efficient housing stock than its urban counterpart, considering that most properties were built before the introduction of the first thermal regulations in the 1970s.

Additionally, rural households have limited access to clean and affordable energy sources, often forcing them to heavily rely on coal, biomass and heating oil, leading to higher energy-related costs and poor indoor comfort. Cultural practices and consumer behaviour tend to further reinforce the use and reliance on fossil-based heating. In contrast to cities, the low population densities of rural areas also result in higher grid-related expenses and limited access to energy infrastructure. Due to a lack of job prospects, as well as a large part of rural communities not being of working age, household incomes tend to be lower, thereby increasing their risk of experiencing energy poverty.

Four main categories of barriers to the implementation of energy efficiency policies in rural areas have been identified, including financial, awareness and access, geographical, and regulatory barriers, with financial barriers being the most prominent. Key financial obstacles include a lack of capital and high up-front costs of energy renovations, while for awareness-related challenges, limited access to technical information and scepticism among rural residents about energy efficiency were found to be relevant. Among geographical barriers, the shortage of local expertise and workers is the most prominent, while for regulatory barriers, unsupportive or inconsistent policy frameworks favour solutions for urban regions rather than rural ones.

Addressing these drivers and barriers while minding rural and peri-urban characteristics requires coordinated action that connects policy ambition with local capability, ensuring that national energy frameworks translate effectively into rural realities via tailored solutions for each community.

Co-creation as a bridge between policy and practice

A central innovation of RENOVERTY was the co-creation of Rural Energy Efficiency Roadmaps (REERs) — practical, locally adapted guides that support households and authorities in the planning, financing, and implementation of energy renovations. These roadmaps were developed collaboratively through a multi-stakeholder process involving ministries, municipalities, social services, local action groups (LAGs), community organisations, and rural citizens themselves. By combining top-down policy frameworks with bottom-up community input, the co-creation process ensured that the resulting solutions were both technically sound and socially grounded.

The co-creation process unfolded in four structured phases:

 

_{Figure 1. The RENOVERTY co-creation process, used to develop rural energy efficiency roadmaps (REERs) and a series of solutions to reduce rural energy poverty through increased energy efficiency and renovation. Source: IEECP}

This iterative process turned co-creation into a governance tool rather than just a participatory exercise, allowing policymakers to test real-world assumptions while empowering local actors to influence programme design.

The Rural Energy Efficiency Roadmaps (REERs): local tools for systemic change

The REERs produced under RENOVERTY represent an integrated framework to guide both households and institutions through the renovation journey. Two complementary types of roadmaps were developed for each pilot area:

• Household REERs, offering step-by-step guidance on energy efficiency improvements, available funding, and practical advice for overcoming common obstacles.
• Stakeholder REERs, identifying the roles, responsibilities, and coordination mechanisms between local, regional, and national actors for effective energy poverty alleviation.

In total, RENOVERTY delivered 32 REERs for rural and peri-urban areas across its seven pilot regions in Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Specifically, 16 REERs were co-created for households and 16 for stakeholders, produced in both local languages and English, and tailored to each region’s legal and technical context and its most prominent dwelling types. Together, these tools offered a structured methodology for transforming local insights into replicable models for rural renovation, applicable far beyond the project’s pilot areas. The REERs also highlighted the importance of interdependency between financial, social, legal, and technical measures for energy poverty alleviation, as successful renovation efforts often required simultaneous progress in multiple domains. For instance, community outreach supported by legal regularisation, or financial aid combined with technical guidance. Recognising and managing these interlinkages proved essential for achieving renovations for both households and policymakers. As such, the REERs for stakeholders both provided recommendations for the development of solutions to alleviate rural energy poverty, while simultaneously helping to implement these in cases where the party responsible for carrying out the measure was involved in the aforementioned co-creation process. Solutions were developed to address the most common barriers to rural renovation, including technical, legal, financial and community/social barriers. The REERs for households then guided and encouraged households to take advantage of the various resources that were co-designed and implemented within RENOVERTY, as well as the ones that were already available independently of the project.
 

_{Figure 2. A visual summary of the contents of the technical REERs for Households and the conceptual REERs for Stakeholders. Source: IEECP}

Connecting local innovation and policy support

The RENOVERTY pilots demonstrated how local innovation can inform, and be supported by, higher-level policy frameworks. Across the seven countries, project partners tested practical mechanisms to bridge the gap between policy intent and implementation capacity, from which several standout financial, technical, legal, and social measures emerged. Although each region presented its own characteristics and barriers, a shared pattern became clear: rural renovation succeeds when local solutions and national governance interact dynamically, allowing community realities to shape policy, and enabling supportive frameworks to scale what works on the ground.

In the financial domain, one of the most innovative measures was Italy’s creation of a microcredit scheme specifically designed for households unable to access conventional financing. It is currently being developed through partnerships with third-sector organisations, and will enable vulnerable residents to undertake phased, small-scale renovations that would otherwise be impossible. This structural instrument, therefore, has the potential to complement broader incentive schemes. Similarly, Croatia and Italy demonstrated how renewable energy communities can function as financing engines for renovation when designed with social mandates. Croatia’s Energy Community SAVA, led by a Local Action Group, and the Italian discussions around embedding a ‘solidarity clause’ into the Parma 2030 REC both showed how local energy production can generate long-term revenue streams to reinvest in vulnerable households.

These community-led models are now informing Member State preparations for Social Climate Fund–supported energy community schemes. It should be noted that even when full-cost renovation subsidies are available, such as in the case of Slovenia’s Eco Fund, funding must be accompanied by locally rooted support structures to increase the uptake of renovations, as other barriers still prevent works from taking place. For example, social workers and targeted outreach help households to access previously unknown or complicated grants, highlighting the importance of pairing financial instruments with human-centred delivery. Therefore, these experiences highlight that effective financial measures can originate from practical, local adjustments rather than large-scale reforms, and have the potential to strongly influence national subsidy design.

On the technical side, several measures stood out for their ability to both address local needs and inform broader policy frameworks. Estonia’s comprehensive one-stop-shop model offered support from technical design through to grant applications and contractor procurement, with its effectiveness prompting national actors to integrate its principles into Estonia’s renovation grant schemes. Spain adapted this model by deploying an itinerant version that brought technical and administrative assistance directly into remote villages, reinforcing the message that accessibility is central to technical support in rural contexts. Estonia also demonstrated the value of detailed renovation designs co-created with residents and architects. These designs, developed according to national codes while responding to local expectations, fed updated directly into the national Renovation Guide. Hungary, meanwhile, applied a more immediate and low-cost technical measure through door-to-door light energy audits. These household visits generated granular information on building performance and renovation potential, which proved invaluable for national discussions on the country’s Social Climate Plan and upcoming climate law. Italy tackled the technical barriers from a different angle with its RENOLABS, offering practical training and access to a community tool bank, showing national policymakers that technical capacity gaps can be addressed through community-based, hands-on solutions rather than centralised programmes alone.

Significant advances were also made in the legal and administrative domains. One of the most important achievements was the integration of RENOVERTY’s Rural Energy Efficiency Roadmaps into national Social Climate Plans (SCPs). In Croatia, Slovenia, and Spain, REER-derived recommendations shaped the legal and programmatic architecture of the SCPs, demonstrating that policy frameworks become more effective when directly informed by tested local methodologies. Croatia’s pilots also revealed the systemic challenge posed by unregistered or irregular rural homes, highlighting the need for national reforms in building regularisation. Slovenia, through its collaboration with social services and municipalities, helped national actors identify necessary administrative simplifications in Eco Fund applications, pointing toward streamlined eligibility requirements and more tailored procedures for vulnerable groups. These cases show how local implementation challenges, when systematically documented and communicated, can drive adjustments in national legal frameworks.

In terms of social innovation, several measures demonstrated how trust-building and community participation form the backbone of successful renovation initiatives. Portugal and Spain both experimented with itinerant outreach models that brought advisors, information sessions, and application support directly to residents in remote or ageing communities. These models addressed the social isolation and low digital literacy that often hinder participation in renovation schemes and clearly illustrated to national authorities that accessibility and interpersonal interaction are prerequisites for the uptake of works. Spain’s Peer-to-Peer Renovation Lab further enriched this social dimension by creating spaces where renovated households could share experiences and advice with neighbours, fostering trust and demonstrating renovation as a collective, rather than individual, process. Slovenia and Portugal also benefited from close collaboration with social service providers. When social workers became involved in identifying and accompanying vulnerable households through the renovation process, national strategies began recognising the need to embed renovation support within wider social welfare systems. In both Croatia and Hungary, hyper-local engagement through household visits proved critical for reaching residents who were disconnected from institutional channels or sceptical of government programmes. These efforts fed directly into national debates, reinforcing the argument that renovation delivery must be grounded in human interaction, not simply financial or technical measures.

Across all seven countries, these measures show that rural energy poverty cannot be addressed by isolated interventions. The RENOVERTY experience confirmed that local innovation plays a critical role in revealing bottlenecks, designing workable solutions, and generating the evidence needed for policy change. At the same time, national and European frameworks, such as Social Climate Plans, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), and the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), provide the stable support structures needed to scale these local models. Where both levels interact effectively, renovation becomes not only feasible but transformative, offering a pathway toward a more just and inclusive energy transition for rural communities across Europe.

Multi-level coordination for rural energy poverty alleviation

RENOVERTY’s findings underline the importance of multi-level governance in rural renovation, as energy poverty alleviation is rarely a single-sector issue but rather intersects housing, social policy, energy, and territorial development. Without coordination across ministries, agencies, and local institutions, even well-funded programmes struggle to reach the most vulnerable.

The project’s success rested on creating horizontal and vertical collaboration channels and implementing the co-created solutions using these established connections. At the local level, municipalities and LAGs acted as trusted intermediaries, linking residents to technical experts and funding opportunities. At the national level, ministries used project evidence to update legal frameworks and monitoring systems. At the EU level, RENOVERTY contributed to policy dialogues, while its learnings were disseminated through platforms such as the EU CAP Network, the Smart Villages Observatory and the Covenant of Mayors, reinforcing its contribution to the broader debate on just and inclusive energy transition. 

Such interactions exemplify how co-creation can serve as a continuous feedback loop between governance layers. Local pilots generate data and practical lessons, which inform policy adjustments, while improved policies then enable local actors to scale successful interventions. Therefore, when local initiatives are methodically documented and strategically communicated, they can shape national and European frameworks, turning grassroots experimentation into institutional learning.

Conclusion

As Europe accelerates toward climate neutrality, the building sector will remain a cornerstone of energy transition policies. Yet without explicit attention to rural areas, the transition risks deepening existing inequalities between urban and peripheral regions. RENOVERTY’s experience demonstrates that addressing rural energy poverty is not only a matter of social justice but also a strategic opportunity to unlock economic activity, strengthen social resilience, and deliver environmental benefits across Europe’s vast rural territories.

Across seven countries, RENOVERTY showed how co-creation can bridge the gap between policy ambition and local action. It demonstrated that rural renovation becomes both achievable and effective when communities are empowered, funding is accessible, and governance is aligned across levels. The project’s lessons extend well beyond the pilot regions and beyond rural energy poverty itself. They offer practical insights for a broader European framework for a just energy transition in which policy frameworks evolve through participation, and innovation emerges through inclusion.

By embedding co-created place-based solutions into national and EU strategies, Europe can ensure that the path to climate neutrality is also a path to social equity, where no community, however remote, is left behind. In many ways, RENOVERTY’s experience serves as practical guidance for implementing what the EPBD recast seeks to achieve in practice, including targeting worst-performing buildings, supporting vulnerable groups, and ensuring that one-stop-shops and renovation roadmaps function effectively on the ground and not only in legislation. Member States may therefore draw on RENOVERTY’s tools and methods as practical guidance when transposing and implementing the directive, turning European ambitions into tangible improvements for rural households.