It is not just if it is not engendered: the energy transition to pursue.

The core message “Leaving no one behind” of the United Nations Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals includes the demand for a social-just energy transition, in particular deriving from goal 7 target 1 ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services. The fair transition to a climate neutral European Union by 2050 is also central to the EC’s Renewable Energy Directive RED II and the European Green Deal. The RED II is aiming to better identify vulnerable people and people affected by energy poverty, making it easier to target the actions and efficiently tackle the growing issue of energy poverty. The overarching policy framework “European Green Deal” adopted in 2020 incorporates the same principle of justice and fairness when moving towards the ambitious yet uncompromising aim of the energy transition, be it on international, European, or national level. However, gender equality is not a concept explicitly highlighted within these efforts to energy transition. The right to energy and the access to energy for all require specific attention to gender considerations since gender blindness neglects differences, as for example in various needs. Energy poverty is not a marginal phenomenon within the EU with nearly 34 million Europeans (in their majority female) unable to afford to keep their homes adequately warm in 2018 (data from Eurostat 2018). Tackling the problem seems increasingly important with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating existing inequalities and rises higher on the political agenda. Nevertheless, the concept of energy poverty still seems a novelty within EU policies, as the recent Commission Recommendation (EU) 2020/1563 of 14 October 2020 on energy poverty shows: no standard definition of energy poverty is existing and there is no mentioning of gender as a relevant dimension to consider. This paper will look at the challenges of engendering the energy transition and showing the gaps of EU and national policies and legislation by taking an analytical perspective on gender and energy poverty, e.g. analysing economic, biological/physiological and socio- cultural dimensions. The various roles gender play within this context will be deconstructed, e.g. energy professionals, energy decision makers and energy consumers and producers. Furthermore, the panel will discuss recommendations for the social and the policy level and for coherent policies by showcasing outcomes from and tools used within the Horizon 2020 project EmpowerMed. These tools are based both on the analysis of the lack of specific public policies to address the gender gap in energy poverty (e.g. report on financial schemes), and on the proposal of actions at the societal level that strengthen the role of women as actors of change, when demanding fair policies from a social and gender justice perspective (e.g. collective assemblies, gender-just energy communities, municipal manifesto for energy transition).