SHEF
Shrinking Housing’s Environmental Footprint
The main goal of this project – one of the 25 projects retained in NRP 73 “Sustainable Economy” – is to identify and promote practical measures that dwellers, property owners and public authorities can implement to reduce the use of primary resources and the environmental impacts of housing, that is, shrinking housing’s environmental footprint (SHEF). These measures cover the construction, use, and refurbishment phases of buildings. They must be effective while preserving the social and economic qualities of housing: liveability, affordability, full cost coverage or return on investment. More info HERE (2017-2021)
SWEET SWICE
Sustainable well-being for the Individual and the Collectivity in the Energy transition
The goal of this research program is to increase the well-being of people living in Swiss urban neighbourhoods with substantially less energy use. This is to be achieved with new modalities of living and working, changes in leisure and mobility behaviours, and new business models. It involves environmental and technological solutions, but also new social dynamics and creative approaches to material flows. More specifically, the project seeks to experiment and implement sustainable living modes through carefully co-designed interventions on the physical environment for daily living, working and leisure. More info HERE.
Our specific contribution is to identify general strategies for reducing the footprint of housing on resources and to define decent living standards. We will also contribute to the end, by designing 20-year transition roadmaps towards sustainable housing. SWEET research programme of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. (2022-2029)
EDITS
Energy Demand changes Induced by Technological and Social innovations
The EDITS network is a research community that aims to develop new approaches to understand and model reductions in energy demand. The work of EDITS finds its roots in the 2018 Low Energy Demand (LED) scenario, and the 2023 updated “High-with-Low” scenario narrative, a normative explanation on achieving wellbeing for all with low energy and material resource consumption. The focus on wellbeing made a more systematic approach to understanding and operationalizing wellbeing more central, with a continuously operating group and process, as opposed to a thematic meeting or “fast-track” initiative, and led to the creation of the EDITS Working Group Wellbeing (WG4 Wellbeing). The role of LEURE is to co-lead the EDITS Working Group Wellbeing, contribute to understanding of how reductions in energy demand affect wellbeing, and facilitate the exchange with the SWEET SWICE, the Swiss project with a similar focus. (2023-2024)