Between September and December 2018, the ENERGISE project team is engaged in rolling out living labs in 8 countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK. In each country two living labs are organized: ELL 1, in which households are engaged on an individual, household by household basis, and ELL2, the community living lab in which households are invited to group events and are encouraged to interact through a social media group set up for them.
Although the living labs follow the same basic methodology in each country (see figure), there are some differences as a result of adapting the methodology to local circumstances.
Below, we provide a story on each country implementation. Please read them as an introduction as more stories and analysis of the results and outcomes will follow later.
To visit each of the country ENERGISE Living Lab sites, please go to http://energise-project.eu/node/1239
And here are the stories of the 8 countries:
ENERGISE Living Labs in Denmark
We launder too frequently and we heat square meters instead of bodies.
Norms, ideas and practices connected to comfort and cleanliness have changed dramatically since the 1950ies. Amongst other things, this has resulted in resource intensive usages of energy, water and products. 20 households in Trekroner and 18 households in Viby Sj are trying out the ENERGISE challenges, which actively questions the frequency with which we do our laundry and the temperatures we keep to feel comfortable.
Baseline
Right after our initial visit in September, the households were busy with registering the frequency with which they do laundry, as well as the type of laundry they do. Likewise, they have monitored the temperature in their homes and assessed whether or not the temperature was comfortable to them. They have been registering these things in diaries that we brought them, and through tools that ENERGISE have provided, such as thermometers and energy meters as seen below on Image 1.
Image 2: Laundry and heating diaries
The Challenges
After about four weeks of baseline measurements, we visited the households again. This time we interviewed them in more detail about their laundry and heating related habits. Besides talking about comfort related to cleanliness and temperature, we discussed types of and access to laundry machines as well as heating systems in their homes. We also asked the households about any changes in ways of laundering and home heating that they might remember from growing up. Finally, we introduced the households to the ENERGISE challenges.
Laundry Challenge and Heating Challenge
The households are challenge to reduce their laundry cycles in half. This means that if a household runs 4 laundry cycles per week, we challenge them to only run 2. The number in itself is not overly important; what is essential is that the households consider if they really need to wash an item or if it can be worn or used longer. We challenge ideas and social aspects related to cleanliness that are generally resource intensive. This challenge runs for 4 weeks in October, followed by the heating challenge. We ask our households to reduce their indoor temperature to 18 degrees Celsius. For those who find that too cold, it can be 19 or even 20 degrees instead. The number is not in itself important here either: what is essential is that the households re-evaluate in what way heating plays a role in their ways of producing comfort within the home. It is also essential to get an idea of how easier/difficult it is to adjust and reduce indoor heating which to some extent depend on the heating systems, which varies across our households. The heating challenge runs in November.
Along with each of the challenge, the households receive a box with ideas and materials that can assist the households in coping with the challenge. For instance, the laundry-challenge-box includes artefacts that make airing out clothes easier, so that they may feel less inclined to throw it in the washer.
In December we will visit the households again, to talk to them about their experiences with the challenges; what has been possible, what has been difficult, what has been fun, what has been impossible?
ENERGISE Living Labs in Finland
In Finland, there are currently 19 households engaged in ELL1 and 18 in ELL2, meaning a very low dropout rate. The participants of the ELLs generally considered the challenges to be truly challenging – as expected – albeit some ELL1 households already had their winter temperatures quite low. As the laundry challenge is relative instead of an absolute, it challenges everyone. Most participants committed to both challenges suggested by the ENERGISE team (halving laundry and reducing indoor temperature to 18 degrees), though many felt that reducing temperatures all the way down to 18 ○C may not be easy. Especially, in ELL2 apartments, the challenge might actually be difficulties in reducing temperatures and the small influence the households have on them due to the automatized ventilation and the preheated replacement air in the apartment buildings. Also heat conduction from non-participating neighbor flats, furnaces and fireplaces that are difficult to regulate, and slowness of temperature changes in highly insulated houses are some contributing factors (we told participants not to keep windows open just to reduce temperatures). The final results will be nevertheless interesting, but could tell as much about technical heating systems as heating habits.
The general atmosphere has been inspiring and warm, both in the interviews and in the weekly surveys with some people voluntarily collecting more data than required by us. Households have discovered novel ways of doing laundry and started to rethink the meaning of cleanliness. As the heating challenge just started, any results are still to be discovered, but the interviews did leave people thinking about the necessity of walking barefoot and t-shirted in the middle of the freezing winter.
Image 1: An ELL 1 house with thermal collectors on the roof and heat pumps on the wall
Image 2: A peek into both challenges: washing machine and dryer on the left, and on the right a sophisticated computer-controlled heat distribution system that utilizes exhaust air warmth.
Image 3: En energy consumption monitoring system so precise it detects when your morning coffee is ready and if the children have heated up their after-school meals
Image 4: An innovative solution to speed up hang-drying
Image 5: One ENERGISE researcher is a paraglider pilot who took a different angle to our ELL1 site, Porvoo.
ENERGISE Living Labs in Germany
The ENERGISE living labs were rolled out across the Oberland region in September with participating households predominantly coming from the towns and surrounding hinterlands of Weilheim and Murnau. Located 30 mins from the Bavarian Alps, this scenic region retains a strong rural connection with agriculture and forestry accounting for almost 90% of land use. Consequently, the ENERGISE Team members from LMU Munich focused on ensuring a diverse set of both urban and rural ELL participants employing a variety of recruitment strategies including market-street stands, local advertising and online viral video marketing. Over the course of 3 weeks, 40 1st phase household visits to install monitoring equipment and record baseline measurements were carried out over a 15km radius incorporating a combination of older rural farm households, modern city centre apartments and terraced housing as well as larger detached and semi-detached households in smaller villages. Participants included a significant number of busy households with young children and the inclusion of a number of rental households (over 25%). One of the more interesting preliminary observations from the initial contact with households was the presence of a wide range of temperatures perceived as “good” or “appropriate” in the context of both heating and laundry practices.
Image 1: Annika Musch M.sc. and Michael Maier conducting research in the field... literally!
Image 2: Dr. Eoin Grealis and Michael Maier installing electricity meters
Image 3: Recruitment Day: Murnau
Prof. Dr. Henrike Rau and Annika Musch M.Sc.
ENERGISE Living Labs in Hungary
Out of the more than 300 households across Europe, the Hungarian project partner, GreenDependent Institute involved 41 households living in Gödöllő, a town of approx. 30,000 inhabitants near the capital Budapest, to participate in the ENERGISE Living Labs.
Image 1: Challenge kits for the focus group
The focus of ENERGISE Living Labs (ELLs) has been on households' daily energy use, related to two specific areas: cleanliness (laundry) and thermal comfort (heating) in the home.
As the first step of Living Labs in August, households were asked to fill in a baseline questionnaire that focused on their initial energy use and everyday habits. At the beginning of September, each household was visited personally and they received a starter kit involving temperature meters, logging thermometers and energy meters. These meters were placed in each home to collect data during the Living Labs.
Image 2: Sustainable delivery of challenge kits for individual households
Half of the households have participated in ELLs individually (ELL1), while the other half have also been invited to group events (ELL2) and have been encouraged to exchange information through a social media group as well.
The first focus group event was organised on the 2nd of October in the local Civil House of Gödöllő where participants had an insight into the programme and they were asked to undertake two challenges related to heating and laundry, respectively. At the end of the event they took home the two challenge kit boxes, and were told to open the boxes at the beginning of the laundry challenge (8th October) and heating challenge (29th October) each.
In order to build a stronger sense of community among ELL2 members, GreenDependent decided to organise a mid-term meeting at the end of the laundry, and the beginning of the heating challenge. This event was intended to be less formal and less strictly structured than the first, opening event. ELL participants had a chance to relate their good and perhaps not so good experiences related to the laundry challenge they had undertaken. Due to the ice-breaking game at the beginning of the meeting there was a relaxed atmosphere; so funny stories, nice achievements as well as frustrating feelings could be shared in a supportive environment.
Image 3: Mid-term focus group meeting
During the Living Labs, participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire each week during the 7-week challenge period. The number of questionnaires sent in clearly shows the enthusiasm and commitment of people participating in the Living Labs in Hungary: each week 90-95% of them filled in the online forms asking them to report on progress with first the laundry, and then the heating challenge.
The last focus group meeting for the ELL2 group was held on 4th December where people had a chance to evaluate the whole Living Lab, meet once more and celebrate their living lab experience.
Image 4: Closing focus group event
The Hungarian organiser, GreenDependent voluntarily undertook to calculate the carbon footprint of the three focus group meetings and the final joint event to be held in March 2019, and emissions of these events will be offset by planting indigenous fruit trees. The carbon footprint includes the number of participants, the length of event, the mode and distance of trips, food and drinks, servicing, brochures, printed materials, local energy use (lighting, air-conditioning, laptops, etc.), energy and paper used during the events. Fruit trees will be given to Living Lab participants at the final event and we hope they will happily plant them in their own gardens or community/school gardens around the town.
Image 5: Fruit trees to offset carbon footprint of ELL events
ENERGISE Living Labs in Ireland
37 houses in Tipperary, in the midlands of Ireland are engaged in the ENERGISE Living Lab at the moment. The majority of these houses are located in very rural locations with houses that were built during the “Celtic Tiger” which was a time of economic boom in Ireland. A large proportion of the households in ENERGISE Living Lab 1 were relatively affluent during the Celtic Tiger and now have houses that are larger than their current requirements and difficult to heat as a result. The participants in Living Lab 2 in Ireland are all part of a secondary school community, in a rural village near Thurles. The participants include parents of current students of Scoil Ruain, Killenaule, past students of the school, teachers, support staff and others from the school community. The participants were asked to take part in a laundry and heating challenge in their homes and to record data on the changes that they made to their laundry and heating practices during the challenges.
Image 1: Scoil Ruain, Killenaule in Tipperary
Image 2: Photo of rural location in Tipperary
Baseline data
After the initial household visit in September, where the electricity meters, thermometers and temperature and humidity loggers were installed, the participants started recording their baseline data in their laundry and heating diaries. They were asked to continue their normal practices and to record information on their laundry and the temperature of their rooms during this time. The participants were given a GroEgg nightlight thermometer to record the temperature of their homes during the challenge. This nightlight changes colour when the temperature becomes too hot or too cold (according to the temperature bands on the thermometer).
Image 3: Electricity meters and temperature loggers
Image 4: GroEgg thermometer nightlight
After three weeks of baseline data the Irish researcher visited the houses again to undertake deliberation interviews and to give the participants their ENERGISE laundry and heating challenge kits. In early October, the laundry challenge started, and the participants were asked to attempt to reduce their laundry. The participants were also asked to commit to a laundry and heating challenge and to try to reduce the number of laundry cycles per week and the temperature of their homes. The participants are required to complete an online energy survey every week which asks a series of questions about their laundry and heating habits and routines. This laundry challenge runs for 4 weeks in October, followed by the heating challenge. The researcher asked the households to commit to reducing their indoor temperature to 18 degrees Celsius, and if this is too cold, another temperature like 19 or 20 degrees was agreed. Most of the households committed to halving their laundry, with some agreeing to their own challenges.
Image 5: Example laundry challenge card
Image 6: Example laundry diary
The challenge kits were boxes that contained tools to help with the challenge and leaflets with tips and tricks on how to reduce their energy use. Two focus groups were undertaken with ELL2 as part of the data gathering in October, and these were held in the school. The participants were vey engaged during these focus groups and committed to their energy challenge at the end of these discussions.
Image 7: Focus groups
The researcher will visit these households again in December to talk to them about their experiences with the challenge. It is hoped that these discussions will give greater insight to the socio-cultural influences on energy used for heating and laundry in the home.
ENERGISE Living Labs in the Netherlands
On September 24, 20 households of the Maastricht ENERGISE Living Lab (ELL 1, or the individual Living Lab) and 14 households of the Roermond ENERGISE Living Lab (ELL 2, or the community Living Lab) started with the ENERGISE Challenge, recording and challenging their home energy practices. They record their habits by logging their laundry and heating behavior (e.g. number of washing cycles, indoor temperature) in 'diaries' provided by the ENERGISE team. Since October 22, each household has been attempting to reconsider their common laundry routine as part of the 'Laundry Challenge'. While most households accepted the common challenge of reducing their weekly number of cycles by 50%, others opted for a personalized challenge that they feel more comfortable attempting. About a week ago, on November 12, the ELL households started their 4-week 'Heating Challenge', for which there was a similar split between ELL1 households who accepted common (reducing the indoor temperature to 18°C) or personalized challenges (most of these challenges are 19°C and 20°C). Participants are responding well to the weekly surveys that help the researchers track individual households' progress, and appear to be taking their challenges seriously. Especially the households from Roermond (ELL2) are very keen in filling in the weekly surveys, from this group all the data is complete! The heating challenge will end on December 9th and a final round of interviews will be conducted with participants to reflect on their experiences and the ELL as a whole.
Image 1: Challenge cards in the Netherlands
ENERGISE Living Labs in Switzerland
In Geneva, we have 20 individual households participating in ELL1 (ENERGISE Living Lab 1), with another 16 households in a cooperative building or community of place (ELL2). After packing up our challenge kits, we set out to meet the individual households over a two-week period, engaging them in a deliberation phase which set out to understand their existing practices and discuss social norms around laundry and heating. We found people to be very welcoming and curious about the challenges, which began on October 15 for laundry, and November 5 for heating. We also hosted a focus group on October 8 in the cooperative building, which attracted several families with children of all ages, with interesting discussions and a delicious meal prepared by a migrant-women catering service in Geneva. Urbamonde, an association working on participative methods, helped us host the focus group session. All of the households had already been visited by Terragir, another community-based association which works on energy issues and who were able to install meters in most households and thermologgers in all. The University of Geneva team found it very important to support the non-for-profit actors in the city who were already engaged in energy-related issued, as partners in the ENERGISE ELL implementation phase. The heating challenge was introduced at a time period in Geneva when it was still relatively warm outside, but once November came around heating systems were definitely up and running. We had varied responses when the challenges were introduced, with some people feeling that the laundry challenge would be much more difficult than heating, and visa versa. What was most appreciate were the ELL Challenge Kits, sealed with a “open by” date and which people received very much like they might receive Christmas presents in advance – in eager anticipation! We’ve already had some nice feedback from their contents, as people appreciate the warm socks, hot beverage, clothing brush, and apron, among other items. We hope the treats will also be useful for staying warm and feeling clean throughout the challenges!
Image 1: Challenge kits to be delivered to Swiss households
Image 2: Participating households in ELL
Image 3: Focus groups meeting
ENERGISE Living Labs in the UK
The UK ENERGISE Living Labs are based on the south coast of England, around the towns of St Leonards and Hastings. Participants include people from various faith groups and ethnicities and include people with a wide range of educational achievement.
ELL1 (individual ENERGISE Living Lab) consists of 20 individual households for whom the challenge period started on 15th October. Energy use and its impact on the environment is an important consideration for all these participants; its impact on household budgets is also a key consideration for some. A careful review of existing household practices around laundry and heating and personal circumstances (e.g. small children, health issues, work schedule) allowed us to co-create challenges in a way suitable for each individual household. Many participants were enthusiastic about experimenting with laundry and heating, even in situations where their practices already meet the general ENERGISE challenge (e.g. indoor temperature 18 degrees or lower).
Image 1: The picture above is of Audley Genus (Kingston University lead on ENERGISE) with one of the participants in ELL1.
The participants in ELL2 (community ENERGISE Living Lab) are drawn from the membership of a mosque and includes 13 households. The choice of this group as ELL2 was determined by the existence of an extant and the desire of a local organisation to help this community improve its energy sufficiency/efficiency. Two workshops/group discussions took place in the middle of October – one in the Mosque (a predominantly male group) and another in a more informal setting at the local restaurant (a female group). This approach allowed people to choose which discussion group to attend, thereby ensuring inclusiveness and creating a comfortable environment for everyone. The challenge period for ELL2 started on 22nd October. Both workshops collectively agreed to commit to the recommended ENERGISE challenges – these constitute a significant change in the existing practices for most of the households involved.
The challenge period will be running until 2nd December for ELL1 and until 9th December for ELL2. We are really looking forward to learning from our participants’ experiences during the closing interviews and focus groups!
Image 2: ELL1 participants are happy to take a challenge!