Covid 19 has brought out the difficulties of digital poverty or rather of the digital division between the Italian areas equipped with fast Internet and those without it. But now Aeneas and Brother Sun, consortium company whose members are the non-profit organizations of the third sector that mainly deal with the energy issue, shine a light on energy poverty in the Coronavirus era, in support of economically disadvantaged people and made even more fragile by the difficulties associated with the lockdown. Together, in a joint document, they ask the government to include among the post-emergency COVID-19 measures interventions to support the most fragile subjects and, in particular, against energy poverty, to reduce consumption, expenditure on bills and improve the housing quality. Enea and Brother Sun essentially ask for extend access to incentives for energy requalification to the Third Sector of buildings used for activities with a high social impact, as a strategic lever with strong social, economic, environmental and employment effects. And they propose an articulated plan of measures to be brought to the attention of the government.
Indeed, in the opinion of Enea and Fratello Sole, removing the barriers to the use of incentives would allow not only decrease the costs of managing non-profit activities – be they of third sector entities or religious entities engaged in social and charitable activities – but also of produce environmental benefits and to improve the comfort and use of the structures and the use of the spaces by the people hosted, generating employment in the construction and plant engineering sector in the post-coronavirus restart phase. To date, however, the legislation on energy efficiency and sustainability it provides precise indications for condominiums, SMEs and schools, but lacks the rules applicable to buildings managed by the Third Sector where activities with a high social impact are carried out.
“The Green Deal that we are all talking about today as an engine for the recovery will necessarily have to be a Social Green Deal, a set of actions to combat the climate emergency and promote development and well-being above all in favor of the most fragile people”, says the president of ENEA Federico Testa.
“The shock of the emergency we are facing leads to an important awareness of the need to support, now more than ever, the most fragile subjects. At the same time, actions are needed that can act as a lever for recovery. Hence our proposal which, in addition to filling a regulatory gap, would make it possible to ensure that the non-profit world can contribute to the energy transition, an area for which it has a natural vocation since attention to the environment is an issue with a social impact ”, underlines the president of Fratello Sole Fabio Gerosa.
