2000-watt society

The 2000-watt society is an environmental vision, first introduced in 1998 by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zurich), which pictures the average First World citizen reducing their overall average primary energy usage rate to no more than 2,000 watts (i.e. 2 kWh per hour or 48 kWh per day) by the year 2050, without lowering their standard of living. The concept addresses not only personal or household energy use, but the total for the whole society, including embodied energy, divided by the population. Two thousand watts is approximately the current world average rate of total primary energy use. This compared, in 2008, to averages of around 6,000 watts in western Europe, 12,000 watts in the United States, 1,500 watts in China, 1,000 watts in India, 500 watts in South Africa and only 300 watts in Bangladesh. Switzerland itself, then using an average of around 5,000 watts, was last a 2000-watt society in the 1960s. It is further envisaged that the use of car

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Gray Energy - Unawareness of Energy Consumption as an Obstacle to a 2000W Society

Urs Amherd, Marko Ninkovic

2008

Technical and architectural energy strategies for the smart living lab, a sustainable building with reliable environmental objectives

Stefano Cozza

Currently, energy efficiency in buildings is a primary objective of energy policy at regional, national and international levels. On a local scale, this trend has been detected also in Switzerland, where almost 40% of energy consumption has been assumed to be used for heating, ventilation and lighting in buildings. The smart living lab project is born under this scenario, aiming to be a building icon and a sustainability example. Via reducing environmental impacts and its footprint on the local ecosystem, the project intends to reach certain authoritative objectives, like the ones given by the 2000 Watt-Society. The smart living lab is a research centre on future built environment in Fribourg, Switzerland. It accommodates interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research groups and provides infrastructures for experiment on developing innovative concepts and technologies related to inhabitation and work environment. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the main technical and architectural macroparameters and their contribution to energy consumption. The latter in the smart living building is calculated in the aspects of both quantity [kWh/m2] and quality [kg CO2/kWh]. Global sensitivity analysis (SA) was selected as the method to demonstrate the contribution of certain key design parameters to the building energy consumption and their correlations along with the changes of variables. Several energy simulations have been conducted with the variation of each design parameter independently. Finally, due to the elaborated cases, the SA was completed with the identification of the predominant factors on the main energy outputs e.g. primary energy.

2015

Evaluation of the energy consumption in different mobility scenarios to meet the goal of a 2000-watt society

Michel Bierlaire, Frédéric Rast, Riccardo Scarinci

Greenhouse gas emissions related to energy production is the main cause of climate change. Transportation accounts for 30% of the total energy consumption, and a reduction in the energy used for mobility is necessary. The 2000-watt society is an environmental concept that fixes a sustainable limit to the energy consumption in different sectors, including mobility. This paper evaluates the energy consumption in several mobility scenarios, and it assesses whether the goal suggested by the 2000-watt society is achievable. We investigate the social characteristics and mobility habits of the population living in a case study area. Then, we calculate the modal shift induced by transportation policies such as car-sharing, car-pooling and car-free district. We evaluate the resulting energy consumption, and we compare it with the 2000-watt society limit. We conclude that only a set of measures combining car usage reduction, increase in walking and cycling, and reduction in the total travel distance can achieve the needed energy reduction.

2016

Basel

Basel (ˈbɑːzəl , ˈbaːzl̩), also known as Basle (bɑːl ), is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine. Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zürich and Geneva), with 164,48

Switzerland

Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located at the confluence of Western, Central and Southern Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west,

Zürich

Zürich (ˈzjʊərᵻk , ˈtsyːrɪç; see below) is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich.

AR-401(o): Studio MA1 (elii)

Fiction is one of the laboratories that architecture uses for its tests. This should not come as a surprise, since architecture has always been a "science of fiction". The studio holds by elii [architecture office] will work in Madrid on housing, domesticity and fiction.

ME-459: Thermal power cycles and heat pump systems

This course aims at studying thermal power cycles, heat pumping technologies, and equipment.

AR-201(g): Studio BA3 (Rey)

Par une approche à différentes échelles d'intervention - du projet urbain au détail constructif - l'atelier vise à explorer les stratégies architecturales permettant de régénérer les territoires urbains à proximité des transports publics dans une optique de transition vers la durabilité.