Niš is the third largest city in Serbia and has a population of just under 200,000. In Nis, a large percentage of the citizens are connected to the municipally owned district heating system. Municipal ownership of the energy supply and distribution, meant that the municipality could choose to alter the tarifs (which in other municipalities you may need to do through negotiations with private companies or changing of local or national energy policy).
In this case study, politicians chose to change the tariffs system to consumption based billing, which in principle, should mean that citizens just get charged for the energy they use. This sounds like it should be fairer, right? Well in this case, it worked out differently. Many residents live in older buildings that have low energy efficiency standards. In fact, poorer citizens were much more likely to have homes that were badly insulated, and so the change in tariffs affected the most vulnerable in a negative way. So the municipality realised that for consumption based billing to be effective, they needed to ensure that the housing stock was retrofitted. And you can see that this logic is also true for the work that has been carried out in Plymouth.
Moreover, in order to ensure they truly understood citizens' needs, they ensured citizen representation and input and various stages of decision making around energy, including an advisory board for the district heating company as well as citizen representation on the complaints board.
These lessons are relevant in any context. When considering addressing energy poverty it is essential to understand the broad implications of a new policy, how it will interact with people’s day-day reality, and most importantly, ensure citizen participation at all stages, right from the start.
Watch the following video to learn more about how Nis funded the retrofit work, as well as more detail about the different ways that citizens are involved and can have their say. You can see the social value of citizen engagement, and how public buildings have benefitted from retrofit works, and also how they are utilising Thermo Solar. The people that were interviewed in Nis were incredibly generous in their honesty, which we hope you will find useful when applying the lessons to your context.