Social innovation Modelling Approaches to Realizing Transition to Energy Efficiency and Sustainability (SMARTEES)
Project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme
Grant Agreement: 763912
Duration: 36 months
Start date: 01/05/2018
The project official website
SMARTEES project is coordinated by the NTNU-Norvegian University of Science and Technology and it is carried out by a Consortium of 11 organisations from 10 countries. The project, which will run for 36 months, is aimed at improving the acceptance of the Energy Union by European citizens and to increase their responsiveness to socioeconomic incentives (in a perspective of an increased ownership, and prosumerism); and strengthening the inclusiveness and robustness of policymaking, thanks to empirically and theoretically grounded methodological tools to assess and adapt policy strategies.
SMARTEES addresses this need by adopting a multidisciplinary approach, through the integration of theories and methodologies of social innovation and agent-based socio-economic simulation in a comprehensive and flexible framework based on an empirical analysis of trans-European clusters of concrete cases of energy transition in 5 domains: holistic, shared and persistent mobility plan; renaissance based on renewable energy production; energy efficiency in district regeneration; urban mobility with super-blocks’; and fighting energy poverty through energy efficiency.
Each cluster is composed by a success case and few “followers” cases, enabling SMARTEES to study its replicability in different European contexts.
K&I is contributing to the whole project implementation. Moreover, it has the leadership of the WP3 “Clusters of case studies of social innovation”, aimed at understanding how social innovation works “in action” in each of the 5 clusters and at a superordinate level, providing information about phases, obstacles faced, facilitating factors, turning points etc.; and securing the constant involvement of the key innovation agents of each case study in the SMARTEES project to facilitate the co-construction of its findings and outputs.
News
The SMARTEES Final Conference is scheduled next September 14th.We should adopt an Hybrid format: a physical meeting in Groningen in the Forum building, but also with online streaming and discussion. However, if in September it is still not possible to hold the meeting “in person”, the meeting will be held in completely virtual mode.Please consult the Conference Website and look the program.You can register here.At the Conference will be presented the main results of the SMARTEES project lasting over 3 years and centered on dynamics in energy- and mobility-related local social innovations in ten front-runner cities and islands across Europe. K&I ...
The BEHAVE 2020-2021 Conference took place online during 21-23 April 2021. BEHAVE 2020-2021 was the 6th version of the biannual event that focuses on applying behavioural insights in energy efficiency. During this Conference (on April 23rd in the morning) a Special session entitled "Social energy innovation in action – findings from the H2020 project SMARTEES" was organized by the SMARTEES project. Gabriele Quinti from K&I did a presentation (prepared with Giovanni Caiati and Federico Marta) on "Social support as a key driver for social innovation in energy transition. The need of a multi-actor approach". ...
On 13 April 2021, in the framework of the SMARTEES project, the second policy scenario workshop, organised by RUG, ICLEI and K&I, took place. The workshop was addressed to local stakeholders from the cities of not only Groningen and Zurich (as in the first workshop), but also Budapest and Vienna. These stakeholders were asked to reflect on policy scenarios that would be interesting to simulate and incorporate into the Sandbox that will be created at the end of the project. The Sandbox is a tool that will allow to virtually reproduce different scenarios and see what their possible social effects ...
Since September 2020, SMARTEES started the implementation of five “policy scenarios development workshops”, one for each of its 5 reference clusters (Holistic mobility plans; Islands and renewable energy; District regeneration; Mobility in superblocks; Energy efficiency against fuel poverty – see https://local-social-innovation.eu/ ). The first of these workshops, titled “Restricting movement with a use of a certain modality”, was held remotely from September 21st to September 24th. It was organized jointly by RUG, ICLEI, and K&I involving local stakeholders of the cities of Groningen and Zurich. The workshop was based on two cases related to the mobility policy in Groningen and ...
The first webinar of the series titled “What’s new in social innovation and energy transitions?” (led by ICLEI), took place on 13 November 2019. Erica Löfström (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway), Søren Hermansen (Samsø Energy Academy, Denmark), and Frances Sprei (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) shared their experiences with the representants of the local social innovations. Gabriele Quinti from K&I will be the speaker of the second webinar “Thinking ahead in local policies – Reflecting on shared patterns of successful transitions” scheduled next April 8th.Click here for more information ...
First Smartees findings were presented by Jed Cohen (Energy Institute at Johannes Kepler University Linz) at the European Commission’s workshop “How to address consumer or citizen engagement in the energy transition and the Set-Plan implementation” on 20 November 2019. The workshop brought together EU-level policymakers and five Horizon 2020 projects focused on the energy transition from the social science and humanities (SSH) perspective, namely Smartees, Shape Energy, Energy-Shifts, Echoes, and Energise.Click here for more information ...
On 30 May 2019, K&I finalised the draft of the first Smartees policy brief titled ” Social Innovation in the Energy Transition in Action”. This policy brief is based on a Europe-wide study into communities that have been experimenting with some basic features of a real low-carbon society at a local level (cities, neighborhoods, islands) in the frame of the Smartees project. These communities differ concerning their location in Europe, the types of “technological” innovation (spanning from transitions in traffic to investment in insulation), their socio-economic and environmental context (with consequences for the behavior of the involved people), and their ...
A meeting on the “Zürich case” (similar to that previously held in Groningen in November) was held in Zürich on February 5th 2019 in the framework of the SMARTEES project. Lorenzo Cavallasca, Cynthia Müller, Ruth Furrer and Barbara Burger (municipality of Zürich); Wander Jager and Patrycja Antosz (University College of Groningen/RUG); and Gabriele Quinti (K&I) participated in the meeting, overall devoted to the presentation of the SMARTEES project and a co-design of the activities to be implemented in Zürich in the context of the project. The discussion was focused, in particular, on the Zürich mobility strategy (implemented since the mid-1970s) ...
A meeting on the “Groningen case” in SMARTEES has been held in Groningen last November 7th. Terry Albronda and Age Stinissen (Gemeente – municipality of – Groningen); Wander Jager and Patrycja Antosz (University College of Groningen); and Gabriele Quinti (K&I) participated in that meeting devoted to the presentation of the SMARTEES project and a co-design of the activities to be implemented in Groningen. The “Groningen case” belongs to the SMARTEES cluster “Holistic, shared and persistent mobility plan” and is based on the social innovation related to the trafic circulation policy in Groningen, since the conception and the launch of the ...
On October 25 th 2018, Giovanni Caiati, member of the K&I research team in SMARTEES, participated in the Follower Cases on Site Visit to Zurich (CH). The aim of the visit was to present to four followers cities the Social Innovation experience developed in Zurich through the “Holistic, shared and persistent Mobility Plan”. The visit was organised by ICLEI, which is the leader of networking and communication activities in SMARTEES project. Representatives of the Cities of Trondheim (Norway), Izmir (Turkey), Burgas (Bulgaria), and Budapest (Hungary) participated in the visit as follower cities, i.e. cities interested to develop similar social innovation ...
On October 24 th 2018, in Zurich Giovanni Caiati (K&I) met Lorenzo Cavallasca (City of Zurich), who is responsible of SMARTEES project on behalf of the City of Zurich. The meeting was aimed at organising the next steps of the SMARTEES on-field research activities but also at providing with a general update on SMARTEES project, collecting further information on Zurich case, identifying the relevant stakeholders for the in-depth intervies in the qualitative research, and finally at scheduling other meetings to be held in the next months. Indeed K&I is responsible of accompanying the on-field research activities to be carried out ...
After six months from the start of SMARTEES, the activities of project are going on. In October the study visits in two of the cities so called “followers” took place: Vitoria Gasteiz in Spain and Zurich in Swizerland. In this regard it is to be noticed that in SMARTEES the “followers” cities are those which intend to promote some social innovation practices towards energy transition, on the basis of the experiences emerged from the 10 “supporting” and “reference” cases collected in SMARTEES project. These practices concern urban mobility, the energy independence and the regeneration of the urban areas based on ...
Andrea Declich, a member of the K&I team of the SMARTEES project participated, on 22 and 23 of May 2018, at the 12th Society and Materials International Conference (SAM12) held in Metz, France (http://www.sovamat.org/). Particularly, he chaired the second session titled “social sciences and materials” and also presented a paper on “Social cycle of Materials and Collective Actors: Some Ideas for Analysis”. The issue of materials is important also for studying the energy transition. The focus of the paper was on collective actors and the ways in which they are able to promote social innovation, not only in general but ...
The SMARTEES Kick-Off Meeting (KoM) took place in Brussels on May 23 and 24 2018. The meeting, chaired by the SMARTEES coordinator Christian Klockner, has been mainly devoted to the Project’s General Assembly, with the participation of all the partners and the representatives of the “cases” considered by the Project. The final half-day of the meeting was devoted to the first Steering Committee, with the participation of the Work Packages leaders.Getting a common understanding of the general SMARTEES work-plan and specifically of the tasks foreseen in the first year, of the interdependencies between the WPs, as well as of the ...