The Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation, in collaboration with the Snam Foundation, launches a call for social innovators to find scalable and sustainable solutions with which to tackle energy poverty.

Energy poverty represents a major challenge for society.
It has economic and environmental repercussions that require a transversal approach to promote innovative and sustainable solutions, in order to generate a broad social impact as quickly as possible.

This is why the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation has decided to launch this call, born from the collaboration with the Snam Foundation, with the technical contribution of the Incubator of the Politecnico di Torino I3P and the scientific contribution of Ashoka Italia. In fact, the Inclusive Energy call promotes an approach to energy poverty that intends to involve social innovators in order to find solutions – also with entrepreneurial potential – capable of generating a broad and widespread change at the system level.

Background

Energy poverty is defined as a situation in which a household or individual is unable to afford adequate energy services to ensure a decent standard of living, such as heating, cooling and lighting. The cause can be a combination of low income, poor energy efficiency in the home, high energy costs and low awareness.

Several factors affect energy poverty. These include climate change, which influences household energy demand. It should also be remembered that the phenomenon can take two forms: overt energy poverty, when families are unable to meet their energy bills, and hidden poverty, when, despite managing to pay their bills, families find themselves having to opt for a self-reduction in consumption.

This problem, according to the indicator adopted by the Italian government in 2017, afflicts 8.8% of Italian households.

However, energy consumption is not only determined by the technical characteristics of appliances and the energy performance of homes but also depends on the way people consume energy.
For this reason, in addition to structural actions for the energy efficiency of buildings, it is necessary to promote actions of behavioral change and energy innovation, disseminating information on energy saving, good practices and more sustainable consumption patterns.

The proposed intervention

It is to meet this challenge that Accelerare l’Innovazione and Proteggere l’Ambiente Missions of Obiettivo Pianeta have designed the Inclusive Energy Call.
A call that aims to identify, select, support and accompany innovative and creative solutions with the potential to scale their impact, promoted by social innovators throughout the country to combat energy poverty. Initiatives aimed at a paradigm shift in addressing the phenomenon, combining scalable and environmentally sustainable innovations.

Participation

Fifteen finalists will be selected and will benefit from a personalized and specialized accompaniment process, managed by I3P, which will make use of Snam‘s corporate expertise and that of other subjects, with the aim of implementing a development strategy to broaden the impact of the project.

At the end of the accompaniment process, the winners will be selected from the finalists (maximum 5 projects) who will receive an economic contribution (from 10,000 € to 50,000 €) to support their project, in addition to the value of the specialized accompaniment.

The projects

Projects may be implemented throughout the country and must address one or more of the following areas:

• Training and awareness
• Energy Efficiency
• Measurement systems
• Energy consulting
• Mapping
• Behavioural change
• New financing models
• Skills and job development
• Cross-sector collaboration