The Ecobonus Incentive Scheme and Energy Poverty: Is Energy Efficiency for All?

With 2017, National Energy Strategy, Italy introduced a definition of energy poverty, combining three elements: the presence of a high level of energy expenditure, an amount of total expenditure below the relative poverty threshold and a null value for the purchase of heating products. The Integrated National Plan for Energy and Climate adopts the same definition, provides an estimation on the evolution of energy poverty in 2030 and lists the tax deduction scheme for energy renovation of the existing building stock (Ecobonus) among the specific measures dedicated to energy poverty. Implemented as an alternative measure under Article 7 of EED (European Energy Efficiency Directive), Ecobonus enables the households in the no-tax area—which are likely to be energy poor—to transfer their tax credits to financial institutions, work suppliers or other private entities, reducing the investment cost for energy/efficiency interventions. Based on information at the regional level, namely ENEA microdata on Ecobonus, this paper examines the possible relationship between indicators such as household income and the access to Ecobonus. Additionally, the study analyzes if this relationship changes for the different categories of interventions incentivized by Ecobonus, such as the replacement of windows and shutters or of heating systems. The hypothesis is that the incentive measure, with its current approach, has a regressive distributive effect on households, and it does not effectively support energy-poverty eradication. To our knowledge, the relationship between income and interventions incentivized by Ecobonus has not been investigated before, neither at the regional level nor in an energy-poverty framework.