According to the report Sustainable Lifestyles: Today’s Facts & Tomorrow’s Trends, many initiatives, policies, businesses and social movements have accumulated in Europe in the last decade.  Examples are abound: Car and bike-sharing initiatives across the EU, local food chains, urban farming, eco-villages and travel agencies offering stay-cations. Of course, these examples are marginal rather than mainstream. Our current lifestyles are still largely unsustainable and based on overproduction and overconsumption. We eat more meat and dairy, live in larger homes with fewer people, travel more and increasing numbers of people are confronted with obesity and heart disease.

The report Sustainable Lifestyles: Today’s Facts & Tomorrow’s Trends presents a synthesis of research, leading policy and practice, and stakeholder views on potential pathways toward a further spreading of sustainable lifestyles.

Relevant questions addressed include:

• What makes a lifestyle sustainable?
• Why do sustainable ways of consuming, living and moving appear to remain marginal?
• How to make sustainable lifestyles mainstream?
• What is happening now and how can we encourage positive trends to ensure a better future usage of our scarce natural resource base (including energy)?

SPREAD Sustainable Lifestyles 2050 is a European social platform project running from January 2011 to December 2012. Different societal stakeholders - from business, research, policy and civil society - are participating in the development of a vision for sustainable ways of living in 2050. This process will result in a roadmap for strategic action for policy makers and will deliver innovative ideas for business, research and society, regarding the enabling of sustainable lifestyles in European society.  The SPREAD project will formulate a research agenda, of which ECN is work package leader, outlining research needs in the field of sustainable lifestyles based on outcomes of the social platform process. The project is led by UNEP/Wuppertal Institute Collaborating Centre for Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP, Germany), the coordinating partner. Please visit www.sustainable-lifestyles.eu. Join the SPREAD online community of experts and practitioners on the topic of sustainable lifestyles at http://spread2050.ning.com/.

Client:        European Commission's 7th Framework Programme (Coordination and
                  Support Action): Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities
Website:   http://www.sustainable-lifestyles.eu/about-the-project.html
Contact:    Casper Tigchelaar, Koen Straver

An ECN report on designing climate compatible development strategies.

Conventional development aid and climate change related activities in developing countries show an increasing interrelation. The challenge of climate compatible development is often seen in terms of finding triple-win solutions that aim at development, greenhouse gas emission mitigation and adaptation to climate change simultaneously. A new ECN report questions this approach, proposing double-win solutions in two separate spheres of intervention and policy: green growth dealing with problems of rising affluence and energy access dealing with problems of persistent poverty. 

The report explores the consequences of this approach for energy aid architecture by analysing three major challenges that confront the development aid and climate change communities today: mobilizing adequate funds, safeguarding aid effectiveness and stimulating appropriate systems innovation.

The report was written by Jos Bruggink in the context of the IS academy, a collaborative research project on energy access and development cooperation implemented by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the VU University Amsterdam and the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN).

Client:        Ministry of Foreign Affairs NL
Website:    http://cdkn.org/resource/energy-aid-and-climate-compatible-development-strategies/ 
Contact:     Heleen de Coninck

The final compromise text of the proposed Energy Efficiency Directive has been published mid June. Its predecessors, the Energy Service Directive and the Cogeneration Directive were evaluated by ECN. The impact of these Directives was considered to be too low. ECN is currently helping the Netherlands government with assessments on the economic and policy implications of the new directive.

These are aimed at substantial additional efforts of Member States on top of existing EU efficiency policies.

Client:      Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation
Website:  http://ec.europa.eu/energy/efficiency/eed/eed_en.htm
Contact:   Piet Boonekamp, Ton van Dril

On 21 March 2012, the ITRE committee of the European Parliament organised a workshop on “Building a European energy infrastructure - selecting and implementing projects of common interest”. The workshop addressed the proposal of the European Commission for a regulation on guidelines for trans-European energy infrastructure COM(2011) 658 final.

This proposal aims to speed up the realization of new energy infrastructures that are considered key for the achievement of energy and climate goals i.e. to increase the share of renewables to 20% of final energy consumption by 2020 and to realize one internal energy market. The regulation foresees an overarching EU-wide methodology for assessing and selecting projects of common interest (PCIs). Projects can become a PCI if they display economic, social and environmental viability and involve at least two Member States. Projects that qualify for the PCI label enjoy faster permitting procedures, preferential regulatory treatment, and are eligible for EU financing to complement private-sector financing, if needed to realise the project and its societal benefits.

The proposal is currently being debated by several European parliamentary committees, of which the ITRE committee is at the forefront. Adriaan van der Welle was one of five speakers invited to provide input to the Committee.

His presentation focused on the proposed project selection process as well as on its consequences at regional and EU levels. Adriaan expressed concern about the proposed project selection assessment through de-facto multi-criteria analysis with many, suboptimal and overlapping criteria. This makes the assessment vulnerable to political influence. Instead, he proposed to split up the assessment in two steps. First, projects have to be objectively assessed by using a cost-benefit analysis. Political decision making would follow only in the second step.

Client:       European Parliament - ITRE Committee
Website:  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/itre/events.html?id=workshops
Contact:   Adriaan van der Welle

Funded by the IEA Implementing Agreement for Renewable Energy Technology Deployment (IEA-RETD), in the RE-BIZZ project, ECN Policy Studies analysed how new and innovative business models can support an increased deployment of renewable energy technologies (RET) and energy efficiency measures in the built environment. The ECN team analyzed ten business models, a.o. models for energy service companies (ESCOs), property certification with green building labels, and Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) and on-bill financing, where building owners pay back loans for energy efficiency improvements via their property tax or electricity bills.

The business models provide opportunities for building owners, e.g. facilitating access to capital, financing of up-front costs, outsourcing of technical and economic risks, and offering further energy related services. Many of the business models enable a life cycle approach where building owners can spread the investment cost of renewable energy technologies or energy saving measures across the life span of these measures. However, the analysed business models generally only lead to a deployment of cost-effective technologies and cannot address all barriers for an increased deployment of RET in the built environment. Therefore a strong role of policy makers is still required. The study concludes with recommendations for policy makers and other market actors.

As a follow up on the RE-BIZZ study ECN conducted a few interviews with financers, such as banks, to discuss the results of RE-BIZZ. They were asked for their view on the difficulties with financing of and business models for energy improvements in buildings and their view on solutions. ECN published a short article about it (in Dutch) on the ECN website.

Client:        IEA Implementing Agreement for Renewable Energy Technology Deployment (IEA-RETD)
Website:   http://iea-retd.org/archives/publications/re-bizz 
Report:      http://www.ecn.nl/publicaties/ECN-E--11-057
Contact:    Laura Würtenberger

As part of the gas research programme EDGaR, ECN analyses interactions between the gas and electricity markets and the key contemporary developments that affect this interaction. One of these developments is the shale gas revolution on the world gas market. In an earlier contribution , ECN compared the US and EU gas markets and argued that shale gas is unlikely to be the ‘game changer’ that shale gas was for the US market. This is caused by, among other factors, the fact that Europe is better positioned to the large conventional gas reserves  than the USA, is more densely populated, has a different and more challenging legal framework, and is much more import dependent than the US (as anticipated before the shale gas boom).

In a new paper, ECN researchers have used the economic optimization model of the European gas market (Gastale) to analyse the impact that potential shale gas reserves may have on the European gas market. The focus of this analysis is not on whether shale gas is sustainable or may pose threats to safety but rather on what impact shale gas could have if accepted as a new source of gas supplies. This implies that different political decisions across Europe are not accounted for.

Results show that even under ‘optimistic, but not unrealistic’ assumptions regarding investment in shale gas production assets, EU import dependency is only marginally affected. Shale gas is therefore very unlikely to solve EU gas import dependency problems. However, the shale gas that does find its way to the market will successfully replace the relatively most expensive external gas supplies, such as LNG from Africa and the Middle East and pipeline supplies from Algeria and Russia. Moreover, there may be large regional differences: whereas the UK and the Netherlands will not see improvement of their supply position, countries like Poland and France may benefit to a large extent. The paper also identifies changes in gas flows and infrastructure requirements across Europe.

Client:        EDGaR
Website:   http://www.edgar-program.com/  
Paper:       http://www.ecn.nl/publicaties/ECN-M--12-023
Contact:    Jeroen de Joode

The EU-funded project SEANERGY 2020 held its final project workshop in Brussels on 20 June, during the EU Sustainable Energy Week. The project’s final report, launched on the same day, concludes that ‘the European Commission should encourage EU Member States to carry out national maritime spatial planning (MSP)’. There is a general consensus that MSP is a useful tool to manage conflicts between the different uses, and to ensure a balance between economic, environmental and social objectives at sea. However, existing MSP practices largely reflect national needs and priorities and lack explicit focus on transnational issues. Given the expanding nature of human activities, increasing environmental concerns at sea, and their cross-border implications, there is also a need to ensure a transnational focus in MSP activities. Further conclusions in the final report include the need for ‘the European Commission to play a key role in facilitating transnational cooperation and coordination in MSP. Although politically challenging, a new MSP directive, supported by requirements to perform national MSP, but also respecting the Principle of Subsidiarity, could be a way forward. Alternatively, the European Commission could aim for establishing guidelines to promote the necessary steps towards national and transnational MSP’.

Within a consortium of eight different EU partners, headed by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), ECN was the lead partner in developing the project’s policy recommendations. The two-year project, which kicked off in May 2010, aimed at formulating policy recommendations on how to best deal with MSP and remove policy obstacles to the deployment of offshore renewable energy (wind, wave and tidal) in the different European sea basins.

Additional project recommendations, which could either fit into the context of an EU directive on MSP, EU guidelines or other existing EU instruments, include:

• Establishing a regional (or sub-regional) sea basin forum to actively align national objectives and plans across neighbouring borders.
• Ensuring cross-border stakeholder consultations.
• Including cooperation on key MSP-related aspects, such as data collection and management, grid infrastructure development, research and permitting and licensing procedures.

ECN PS colleagues involved in the project were Lachlan Cameron, Michiel Hekkenberg and Karina Veum. Read the full report.

Client:       European Commission
Website:   www.seanergy2020.eu
Contact:    Karina Veum