THE EC 7th Framework Programme project, GILDED (Governance, Infrastructure, Lifestyle Dynamics and Energy Demand: European Post-Carbon Communities), has finally been launched.
GILDED is a three-year collaborative research project running until December, 2011, which aims to identify social, economic, cultural and political changes which could help rural and urban households in Europe consume less energy.
The project involves research teams from Aberdeen’s Macaulay Land Use Research Institute; the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany); the Institute for Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), and The Institute of Systems Biology and Ecology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Each of these organisations is studying initiatives to reduce energy consumption in their own countries, and the different ways people respond to these initiatives, in order to make recommendations to government about how to best help households across the EU reduce their energy consumption.
This research is focused on case studies of a medium-sized city, and its functionally associated rural area, in each of the consortium members’ countries.
Scotland: Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.
The Netherlands: Assen and Assen Municipality.
Germany: Potsdam and Brandenburg.
Hungary: Debrecen and Hajdu-Bih ar County.
Czech Republic: Ceske Budejovice and Budejoviceshire.
Research will be undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team, with sociologists, psychologists, geographers and agent-based modellers working together to:
Establish stakeholder advisory groups in each case-study region.
Evaluate structural incentives for energy consumption in each case-study region.
Assess in detail an energy initiative in each case-study region.
Develop lifestyle profiles of each case-study region.
Develop an agent-based modelling framework, the Community Energy Demand Social Simulator.
Develop policy recommendations for reducing energy consumption at local, national and EU levels.
The focus of the project is on household consumption as a lens for understanding energy-use patterns. In Europe, about 35% of all primary energy use and 40% of all greenhouse-gas emissions come from private households.
While technological innovations can reduce the energy requirement for specific activities and make low-carbon energy sources economically and environmentally viable, their impact in reducing carbon-intensive energy use will depend critically on the lifestyle choices of local households. Otherwise, increases in energy efficiency may simply raise demand for energy-intensive products and services; for example, cheaper home heating may lead to a rise in household temperature or more money spent on air travel.
The EC says that, to permanently reduce energy consumption, low energy consumption must become a way of life.
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