Working directly with academics, householders, practitioners, businesses and policy-makers, the project has been instrumental in developing a greater understanding of the social dimension of energy use. Throughout the ENERGISE project, we have drawn on cutting-edge social scientific methods and techniques to help us develop a better understanding of how and in what way people use energy, with specific focus on thermal comfort (heating homes) and cleanliness (washing laundry). Our work is underpinned by a novel theoretical framework developed for the project as well as future work that considers social practices and cultural change as key ingredients in a successful energy transition. Guided by the ENERGISE conceptual framework, we began by analysing over 1000 existing sustainable energy consumption initiatives focusing on households across 30 European countries, toward developing innovative typologies and informing the empirical component of our project. We then adopted a ‘Living Lab’ approach working directly with over 300 households across 8 European countries. Through the ENERGISE Living Labs, we engaged households in participatory research and deliberations in order to challenge and contest social norms and habitual practices tied up with energy usage, with the overall aim of adopting more sustainable practices and documenting how change comes about in different social and cultural contexts. Overall, we found that through the ELLs, and for most of the households across Europe who participated in the study, reducing indoor temperatures by 1°C in the heating season and reducing laundry by one cycle per week is possible, without compromising convenience and comfort.
ENERGISE provides recommendations formulated for various stakeholders, including lessons learned for EU and national policy for deploying and/or upscaling ENERGISE Living Labs (ELLs) as well as researchers and practitioners for planning and implementing sustainable lifestyle projects. The findings of the project have been disseminated to a variety of stakeholders. Engagement with the scientific community has been conducted through discussion with other researchers about the project, conference presentations, workshops and clustering events, peer-reviewed publications, via social media, the ENERGISE newsletters and other targeted newsletters. ENERGISE has engaged with industry through ENERGISE newsletters and via the Expert Panel members’ networks, and with policy-makers through newsletters, online database dissemination, personal engagement with local policy makers, invited presentations and participation in workshops. ENERGISE engages with civil society, the media and the general public via press release distribution, specific Listservs, organised meetings, ENERGISE newsletters, flyers, ELL participation and dissemination, ELL implementing partners, social media and website visits.
