Writing in the journal Buildings & Cities, ECI researchers Dr Tina Fawcett and Dr Sarah Darby consider the importance of energy sufficiency for the built environment.
Dr Fawcett, Acting Energy Programme Lead and Associate Professor at the ECI, and Dr Darby, Emerita Research Fellow worked alongside Marlyne Sahakian from the Institute of Sociological Research at the University of Geneva.
Their findings form part of a special issue compilation of Buildings & Cities looking at the conditions that can be created for decent living standards for all without exceeding planetary limits.
The feature explores “what the concept of sufficiency means for the built environment - both as a floor (minimum) and a ceiling (maximum) to ensure a "good life". Sufficiency is explored in many interconnected issues such as land use and density, space usage (size and adaptability), sharing of goods, services and spaces, and space conditioning (heating, cooling and ventilation) for health.”
Dr Fawcett said:
I’m delighted to be one of the editors of this special issue. Energy sufficiency research has come a long way in the past twenty years, from an being an idea dismissed or ignored by most, to emerging as an important field of research. We are delighted to be part of this development and hope the special issue will inspire more scholars, policy makers and practitioners to engage with this vital topic.”
All the papers in the compilation are open access and freely available. The contributions include studies that seek to arrive at a shared understanding of sufficiency, from either a consumer/citizen perspective, or from that of practitioners. There are also papers that look to estimate the potential of sufficiency measures, while others explore ways in which sufficiency can be experimented with. Several papers also push conceptual reflections further, on how to integrate justice with notions of sufficiency, for example.
Current research on energy sufficiency benefits from important early work by Dr Darby, bringing ideas of sufficiency into contact with energy policy, and further development in defining energy sufficiency by both Dr Darby and Dr Fawcett.
Read the article in full in Buildings & Cities: Energy Sufficiency in Buildings and Cities