Hypocoercivity methods are applied to linear kinetic equations without any space confinement, when local equilibria have a sub-exponential decay. By Nash type estimates, global rates of decay are obtained, which reflect the behavior of the heat equation obtained in the diffusion limit. The method applies to Fokker-Planck and scattering collision operators. The main tools are a weighted Poincar\'e inequality (in the Fokker-Planck case) and norms with various weights. The advantage of weighted Poincar\'e inequalities compared to the more classical weak Poincar\'e inequalities is that the description of the convergence rates to the local equilibrium does not require extra regularity assumptions to cover the transition from super-exponential and exponential local equilibria to sub-exponential local equilibria.