ENERGISE project meeting in Maastricht
On 2 and 3 February 2017, two months after the official project kick-off, delegates of the ten organisations participating in the ENERGISE consortium convened in Maastricht to review the work done so far and to plan the tasks ahead.
On the first of two meeting days, interrelations between different work-packages were discussed, addressing for example theory building, case review, Living Lab design and public engagement. Although the project had only recently commenced, work on the ENERGISE conceptual framework as well as preparations of the upcoming case collection, clustering and analysis were well underway already. A senior project officer of the European Commission joined the team to provide an overview of the roles and responsibilities within the Commission’s Horizon 2020 research programme and to explain how research results feed into European policy processes. The second day of the meeting was entirely dedicated to interactive workshop sessions to develop a shared understanding of useful concepts, relevant questions and productive workflows across the interdisciplinary and international research team.
ENERGISE
ENERGISE is an innovative pan-European research initiative to achieve a greater scientific understanding of the social and cultural influences on energy consumption. ENERGISE adopts a Living Labs approach to directly observe existing energy cultures in a real-world setting and to test both household and community-level initiatives to reduce energy consumption. A comprehensive review and classification of household and community energy initiatives from 30 European countries provides the foundation for the development of two prototype ‘ENERGISE Living Labs’ designed to capture influences on individual and collective energy consumption. Data collection before, during and after the roll-out of 16 living labs to eight partner countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Switzerland, Netherlands, United Kingdom) will be instrumental in contributing to the design and assessment of future energy consumption initiatives across Europe.
Funded under the EU Horizon 2020 programme for three years (2016-2019), ENERGISE develops, tests and assesses options for a bottom-up transformation of energy use in households and communities across Europe.