ENERGISE Work Package 3, Designing ENERGISE Living Labs, has been developing the online tools and user community for scaling up ENERGISE Living Labs. Based on the feedback obtained from WP4 (Implementing ELLs) and WP5 (Comparing ELLs), feedback from households who participated in the ELLs, and continual engagement with the Programme Board and the Expert Panel, the initial design of the ELLs has been elaborated and the online tools and an online user community have been developed for scaling up, designing, implementing and evaluating a host of ENERGISE Living Labs across Europe.
The online tools are available at http://www.energise-project.eu/livinglabs. The user community is facilitated through a Facebook discussion group open for everyone interested in energy use, sustainable energy initiatives and energy cultures, at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ENERGISEdiscussion/. The introduction to ELLs and their basic design, as well as the step-by-step guide, are also outlined in deliverable 3.6.
The aim of the online tools is to serve everyone interested in doing practice-based interventions such as ELLs in their own contexts. The tools provide step-by-step guidelines for preparation, implementation, monitoring, closing up and assessing initiatives such as the ELLs. The ELLs implemented as part of the ENERGISE project focused on the consumption domains of space heating and laundry, in single households and communities. The guidelines in this deliverable are produced to support interventions also in other fields of consumption and at various sites. The survey and interview templates, as well as other material used in the ELLs are also provided as examples. The guidelines, as well as the data collection templates, are free for everyone to use and modify for their own purposes.
Join the online community for everyone interested in energy use, sustainable energy initiatives and energy cultures, on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ENERGISEdiscussion/!
Senja Laakso, Consumer Society Research Centre at the University of Helsinki