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The effects of COVID-19 have had devasting effects on both health and economies in 2020. At the same time, the lockdown and the downturn of economic activity resulted in a decrease in energy consumption and an accompanying reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In this article, a comparison with the temperature adjustment of energy use is presented for the main carriers of electricity, natural gas, and oil products in the residential, tertiary, industry, and transport (road transport, domestic aviation, and navigation) sectors in 2020 against the previous two years in Greece, along with the corresponding emissions. As the comparison covers the entire year, both COVID peaks in the March–April and November–December periods and the corresponding lockdown effects as well as seasonal variations are included. The analysis shows a reduction, adjusted for temperature, of 3528 GWh in electricity and 10,286 GWh in transport, and an increase of 1916 GWh in heating and other final uses for a net 11,898 GWh decrease and a resulting emissions reduction of 3.48 MtCO2eq (1.29 MtCO2eq in electricity, 2.69 MtCO2eq in transport, and an increase of 0.54 MtCO2eq in heating), or 4.1%, from total national emissions in 2019. The effect is, to a considerable extent, the result of drastic tourist activity contraction, which is starkly evident in the electricity consumption in the Aegean islands. The comparison between the two lockdown periods brings out clear differences, with the reduction in the second one being considerably smaller as the population reverted, to a large extent, to pre-COVID behavior, which implies that no permanent gains from the COVID long-term impact toward decarbonization should be expected.

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic puts stress on the requirements of indoor air quality. Significant improvements in the design of building ventilation systems have become necessary, as this allows for the supply of higher quantities of outdoor air in buildings. Additional capital investment is necessary for increases in the size of ventilation fans and ducts, as well as for the installation of efficient air-to-air recuperators, to recover the enthalpy of the rejected air. To address the increased operation costs, smart strategies are necessary to make rational use of the ventilation system. The required modifications are studied in the example of an 18-zone office building located in Volos, Greece. The building’s energy performance is studied by means of transient simulation. Operation of the ground-coupled heat pump, the upgraded ventilation system and the high-performance recuperators and filters’ interactions is presented in detail at various time scales. The results show the effect of increased ventilation requirements of new and renovated office and commercial buildings in the post-COVID era. The added capital equipment and operation costs must be met with a strong and sustained engineering effort. Especially in the case of nZEB buildings, the protection of public health must be attained, with reduction of the added electricity consumption penalties, in order to keep the nZEB character of the building.

In the recent two decades of recorded literature, energy poverty is increasingly understood as a multi-dimensional issue caused by the low-carbon energy transition. In this study, a literature review was performed, the outcome of which confirmed the contentious nature of energy poverty at the regional and international levels of analysis. Furthermore, the collected literature enabled the identification of those domains under which energy poverty is prevailing. The impacts of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war on energy prices and energy poverty were also considered key issues of interest in recently published studies (published within the last five years). While all the collected studies in the literature review covered a wide geographical context worldwide, a comprehensive analysis of nurturing energy poverty sources and their consequences was primarily and foremost understood in the household sector, which was the research focus of this study, accordingly. Moreover, future research guidelines that should be drawn regarding energy poverty alleviation were also proposed.

Abstract As a result of successive crisis situations, Covid-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, and the climate change and the short term effects of the energy transition, high energy prices, have brought great concern to the citizens and difficulty to the governments to act immediately and provide solutions and measures. The shift to green energy is becoming more and more necessary at all levels with citizens looking for alternative and economical ways to meet their needs in electrical energy. The use of small wind turbines in an urban environment is promising and constitutes a beneficial alternative under certain circumstances. The purpose of the present work is to deliver a fundamental overview on small wind turbines for small scale applications in or near urban areas, discussing their efficiency, financial and certification issues, and the legislative framework in Greece.

Despite the significant volume of fiscal recovery measures announced by countries to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, most recovery plans allocate a low percentage to green recovery. We present scenarios exploring the medium- and long-term impact of the COVID-19 crisis and develop a Green Recovery scenario using three well-established global models to analyze the impact of a low-carbon focused stimulus. The results show that a Green Recovery scenario, with 1% of global GDP in fiscal support directed to mitigation measures for 3 years, could reduce global CO2 emissions by 10.5–15.5% below pre-COVID-19 projections by 2030, closing 8–11.5% of the emissions gap with cost-optimal 2°C pathways. The share of renewables in global electricity generation is projected to reach 45% in 2030, the uptake of electric vehicles would be accelerated, and energy efficiency in the buildings and industry sector would improve. However, such a temporary investment should be reinforced with sustained climate policies after 2023 to put the world on a 2°C pathway by mid-century.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has affected societies and economies around the world, and the scientific community is no exception. Whereas the importance of stakeholder engagement in research has grown quickly the consequences of the pandemic on this has so far not been empirically studied. In this paper, we investigate the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on European energy research, in particular the stakeholder work, during the first wave of the coronavirus in spring and summer 2020. We pose the research questions: (i) How much of a problem are the coronavirus containment measures for stakeholder engagement? (ii) How have researchers coped with the situation, and (iii) How do they evaluate alternative stakeholder activities implemented? We conducted an online survey among European energy research projects with stakeholder engagement between June and August 2020. We found that only one of six engagement activities could be implemented as planned, whereas almost half were cancelled or delayed. The most common coping strategies were changing involvement formats – mainly to webinars or online workshops – or postponement. Whereas respondents are largely satisfied with one-to-one and unidirectional online formats, such as webinars, online interviews, and online surveys, they see interactive group activities as less suitable for online engagement. Most respondents plan to continue using online formats to complement, but not to replace, physical meetings in future research. All long-term effects remain to be seen, but given the postponement of many stakeholder involvement activities, many projects may face problems at later stages of their realisation. These findings suggest that the pandemic may have catalysed a rapid introduction of specific online formats in academic stakeholder interaction processes.

The present paper focuses primarily on investigating whether energy-vulnerable households are more prone to informative, market, and behavioral biases. In this direction, a stated preference approach was used to elicit information about human behavior and cognitive barriers in the context of energy poverty based on both subjective and objective indicators. For the purposes of the survey, a questionnaire was developed that included around 40 questions about housing conditions and information, market, and behavioral barriers related to energy efficiency, energy vulnerability, etc., and specific survey hypotheses were tested employing non-parametric tests. The survey was carried out between November 2020 and January 2021 involving residents of Metsovo, a mountain settlement in Greece. In total, 303 participants took place in the survey through personal interviews, which were conducted remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic-related distancing measures, using a video platform. The analysis shows that households that face thermal discomfort or are in arrears on energy bills seem to be more prone to certain behavioral and other biases. This conclusion is not confirmed for households that face condensation, mold and damp problems or are classified as energy-poor under the “ten percent rule”. The main conclusion drawn is that the income status of the household plays a greater role compared to its classification as energy vulnerable. Nevertheless, the findings of the study need to be confirmed by future research, because the research specifically on how energy poverty affects people’s decision making is extremely limited. In any case, the results are worrisome and illustrate the need for more effective energy poverty policies that will take into account the effects of scarcity on household decision making.