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Nine research organisations from across Europe launch project Energy PROSPECTS // Researchers from nine European countries will explore energy citizenship across Europe

Wednesday 12th May, 2021: Today researchers from nine European countries – Ireland, Belgium, Latvia, Hungary, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Spain and Bulgaria start a three-year project EnergyPROSPECTS to explore the various and challenging aspects of energy citizenship across Europe. The partners will work with citizens communities, businesses and decision-makers to explore ways of involving citizens in the clean-energy transition. The project consortium has received competitive European research funding in the Horizon 2020 programme. The research team from GreenDependent Institute is proud to be a part of the project EnergyPROSPECTS and as such contribute to the transition to clean-energy.

Earth Day is coming - let's plant a tree with Tree Circles!

The Tree Circles initiative was founded jointly by the Schumacher Institute (UK), Social Change and Development (SCAD, India) and GreenDependent Institute (Hungary). The main objective of the cooperation is to strengthen and make more popular tree planting activities for environmental, social, educational and community building purposes.

First National Interdisciplinary Scientific Conference on Climate Change on 12-15 April 2021 (online)

The conference will be held under the auspices of the newly established Scientific Panel on Climate Change (HuPCC), modelled on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), with a view to laying the groundwork for the writing of the First National Climate Change Assessment Report. The main thematic areas of the conference are the content adopted at the Content Determination Conference of the First National Climate Change Assessment Report held in Szeged on 28-29 May 2019 (see Annex 1), which attempts to cover the entire area of climate change in 10 topics.

New publication on ENERGISE! - Challenging social norms to recraft practices: A Living Lab approach to reducing household energy use in eight European countries

A new publication on the 3-year resarch project, ENERGISE is available HERE. Free access!

Abstract of the publication:

"ENERGISE is the first large-scale European effort to reduce household energy use through a change initiative that adopted a ‘living lab’ approach informed by social practice theory. Two challenges were introduced to 306 households in eight countries: to lower indoor temperatures and to reduce laundry cycles. This contribution demonstrates the usefulness of a practice-centered design that takes habits and routines as an entry point for understanding how different ‘elements of practices’ can be re-crafted. We discuss how a participatory ‘living lab’ approach that explicitly encouraged deliberation and reflexivity served to sharpen attention on practices as central to change. We discuss how ‘doing laundry’ and ‘keeping warm’, as very different types of practices, responded to the change initiative.

TreeCircles Conference - Summary

The conference entitled 'The Importance of Trees for People and Planet' was held in two online sessions on 21 and 22 January, 2021. The event was organised jointly by the Schumacher Institute (UK), Social Change and Development (SCAD, India) and GreenDependent Institute (Hungary). Participants of the online conference where mainly from the UK, Hungary and from India. Participants came from very different backgrounds, including treeplanting related organisations, environmentalists, academics and individuals interested in tree planting.

The Importance of Trees for People and Planet - online conference

There will be an online conference related to the importance of trees on two days:

21 Jan, 2021 at 2 pm - 4 pm CET
22 Jan, 2021 at 2 pm - 4 pm CET

The 1st day will be mostly theoretical. We will have presentations on the ecological and social value of trees, the importance of trees in capturing carbon, trees around the world, which types of trees to plant, trees and biodiversity, social forestry and communities.
The 2nd day will describe two initiatives: One in India with Social Change and Development (SCAD) and the other in Hungary run by GreenDependent Institute (GDI), the TreeDependent programme. This will be followed by discussion in small groups on how different organizations and individuals can get involved in tree planting.

A scientific paper co-written by GreenDependent experts about the results of the Compete4SECAP energy saving competition in public buildings is available now

Along with other researchers, Edina Vadovics and Kristóf Vadovics from GreenDependent Institute wrote a paper titled Top Energy Saver of the Year: Results of an Energy Saving Competition in Public Buildings related to the project Compete4SECAP.

Non-residential buildings in the European Union consume more than one third of the building sector’s total. Many non-residential buildings are owned by municipalities. This paper reports about the Compete4SECAP energy saving competition that was carried out in 91 municipal buildings in eight EU member states in 2019.

Happy holidays :)

Daikin and GreenDependent Institute are looking to measure their carbon footprint of residential communities

As part of a tripartite collaboration initiated by the local Interest Association and sponsored by Daikin, GreenDependent Institute calculated the average carbon footprint of 21 families from Piliscsaba-Garancstető during the spring of 2020. The survey found that the average carbon footprint of families involved in the research is about twice the sustainable level.

How to change energy use at workplace?

The brochure was drawn up with support of the EU's H2020 Framework Programme in 2017. The document summarizes the main steps and outcome of the save@work project in an informative way.

The project has been looking at how one can reduce energy consumption in the office by encouraging staff to make small changes to their everyday workplace behaviours, meaning that it focused on energy efficiency to be achieved by behaviour change. The brochure introduces the main achievements of the participating countries, shares the main figures of the winning buildings in each country. Moreover, it summarizes the big ideas revealed in each country. Finally, it summarizes the final award ceremony held in Brussels at the end of the project

The document is available HERE.

GreenDependent Institute