SLA Pilot families reduce their Lifestyle Carbon Footprints in up to 18%!

7 pilot families of Sant Cugat del Vallès achieve reducing their lifestyle carbon footprint in 13% average through the international Sustainable Lifestyle Accelerator Project!

Between 6 and 18% of carbon emissions could be avoided by families through behavioural changes in their daily life in the areas of housing, nutrition, mobility, purchases and leisure activities.

Within the SLA project families first assessed their household carbon footprint, then created their personal transition roadmap and finally implemented changes during an experimental period of 2-3 months. 

The achieved changes have been assessed and quantified by the international Sustainable Lifestyle consortium, and now have been presented to the families by the principal researcher of the project in Spain, Dr. Torsten Masseck. No better place for it than the LOW3 Living Lab of ETSAV (UPC) in Sant Cugat del Vallès, a platform for teaching and research about sustainable architecture and lifestyles!

Families discussed results, shared their experiences and expressed to be very happy with the process and their individual reductions achieved, as they declared to be very motivated to reduce their environmental impact, but so far lacked detailed knowledge and tools how to do so!

SLA now starts in its second round with the creation of the SLA online platform (launch in October 2019) with the aim to reach out to 500 households during this year and engaging over 10.000 in each of the 7 partner countries during 2020. 

Prepare to form part of the SLA community soon! 

International Work Meeting Sustainable Lifestyles Accelerator (SLA)

Form 11^thto 13^thof March project partners from 7 countries (Finland, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, India, Mexico and Spain) came together at ETSAV for holding the second international meeting of the SLA project. 

During 3 days, partners presented their individual results and experiences made during the first round of the 3-year SLA project, and worked together intensively on the design and functionalities of the future SLA web platform. 

A Co-creation session held at LOW3 Living Lab with external stakeholders form the municipality of Sant Cugat del Vallès as well as UPC students which worked on the platform concept, allowed to advance in the definition of specific concept, appearance and functions of the future SLA platform.

MOOC “LOW3: Living Zero!”- Students as SLA Energy Consultants

Students of our MOOC Course LOW3: Living zero! started their final exercise on energy efficiency and solar potential adopting the role of energy consultants to our SLA pilot families, analysing the specific energy parameters of a real private household.

In a first step students analysed existing data about energy consumption, type of energy used and other available information about the energy system and energy use of the households.

In a second step students did the energy certification of a specific household and described possible improvements of the overall energy performance. This included the use of online tools and a visit to the family’s home for raising detailed data about the building envelope, façade and window qualities as well as existing active energy systems.

In a last step, students analysed the solar potential of the household for a roof-top PV installation, gathering data about the building’s roof and using an online simulation tool in order to calculate the possible annual PV electricity production.

All these exercises resulted in a report to the SLA pilot families, useful for them in order to optimize the energy performance of their home through behavioral change and building management, and for taking decisions about a possible investment into energy efficiency measures or a PV installation.

This approach to the real-world energy performance of existing buildings as part of our innovative educational offer at ETSAV is another example how our students are getting prepared for being active change agents of society, facing real problems of our buildings and cities within a holistic understanding of sustainability in its economic, social and environmental dimension. Linking regular teaching at UPC and a research project like SLA in the context of Living Lab LOW3, allows offering this unique learning approach to students. 

More information about the Living Lab LOW3 project: www.livinglab-low3.blogspot.com 

More information about our MOOC course LOW3: Living zero!: https://mooc.upc.edu

BONES FESTES / MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Thank your for a 2018 full of interesting projects and interesting people!
We wish you a 2019 full of circularity, collectivity and positive transition!

SLA Follow-up Meeting with pilot famílies of Sant Cugat

This week pilot families of Sant Cugat came together for exchanging their experience of the last 3 weeks regarding the implementation of their ambitious Roadmaps towards a “3 tonnes lifestyle”.

Families got updated about the activities of the other 6 international partners of the project and then explained their personal experiences and success stories regarding smaller and bigger changes in their daily lifes. Especifically changes in their consumption habits, regarding food, and regarding mobility have been discussed.

All families said to be happy with their choice to implement real changes in their daily routines, although time constraints, economic reasons and in general our fully packed daily agendas require extra efforts for making changes real.

For mid to end January a detailed evaluation of real changes is planned, with a quantification of the carbon footprint reductions achieved by the families. A “Future Workshop” then will close this first round of the SLA project in order to start the second round which will use all experiences made for designing the SLA online platform, up scaling the SLA experience to the next level.

SLA meets "Klima Neutral Berlin" and other German Initiatives

The SLA project representatives from Switzerland, Germany, Finland and Spain met with project managers of similar German initiatives at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) for exchanging experience, discussing the Upscaling challenge of each project and looking for opportunities for further collaborations.

Beside SLA, three other projects have been presented: the HOPE project from Tübingen, the CLIMATE CULTURE LAB (CCL) (www.climateculture-lab.de ) and the KLIMA NEUTRAL BERLIN (KLIB) (https://klimaneutral.berlin) project by PIK.

Individuall and collective behavioural change, value discussion and the activation of the collective intelligence of society, necessary for real changes under the increasing pressure of global climate change challenges have given place to interesting reflections and conversations among the participants.
The meeting place has been spectacular cupola of one of the former astronomic observatories of PIK from the end of the 19^th century. https://www.pik-potsdam.de 

SLA ROADMAPPING WORKSHOP SANT CUGAT DEL VALLÈS

The SLA Roadmapping Workshop with the first 7 pilot families has taken place at the ETSAV School of Architecture (UPC) at Sant Cugat del Vallès.

In a first step the results of the Quick Footprint Questionnaire, which allowed to analise the current material and carbon footprint of our families, have been presented, with detailed information about their impact inf the fields of housing, mobility, food, consumption and leisure activites.

It showed that footprints where quite diverse, from arround 3.8t up to over 18 tonnes of CO2 per person. A more detailed look at the results showed that mainly long distance travelling has been the cause for individual elevated footprints, and interesting discussions arose regarding the impact of mobility and posible future changes in order to mitigate these impacts.

As second step a range of over 70 "actions for footprint reduction" have been presented to the families, with detailed information about the individual contribution of each action to a lower carbon footprint. One day of working at home instead of traveling 20 km to the office by private car would allow for savings of arround 120kg CO2 a year. Changing to a 100% renewable electricity supplier might have an impact of arround 900kg CO2 per year, depending of the current supplier and its energy mix, as well as the individual consumption pattern.

With this detailed information about specific options, families designed a set of actions which would bring them to a "3 tonnes CO2 per person lifestyle", considered an important milestone for 2030 in order to limit global warming to 1.5ºC in 2100, and before aiming for a "1 ton CO2 per person lifestyle" in 2050.

After this exercise, families entered into the third part of the workshop: locating their individually selected options on a timeline to 2030 in order to define which action might be implementated in which moment. Through this las step, families achieved creating their personal and specific roadmap towards a more sustainable lifestyle, which is now ready to be implemented!

Based on this first experiences in all 7 partner countries, the SLA project aims to develop in the upcoming 2 years an online platform which will allow the personal calculation, roadmapping and tracking of the CO2 and material footprints of private households through digital tools.

During the next 2 month our pilot families will start implementing their roadmaps, we will support them together with local stakeholders like the municipality of Sant Cugat, and we will gather further knowledge how to foster the process and improve the success of the Sustainable Lifestyle Accelerator methodology.