1. Introduction
Energy is an essential part of the European Union (EU), and is a necessary mean to maintain the life standard of EU today. Having such importance as energy has, it also makes the EU vulnerable to changes regarding the energy market both internally with the member states, and externally against the global market.
The European energy market is subjected to several major challenges that need to be solved, if EU wants to have a sustainable energy market that is competitive against the rest of the world. EU is increasingly becoming more and more dependent on energy imports, which creates an unbalance in the economy and in the balance of payments (export/import). Today, EU imports more than 50% of its energy, often from regions that are politically unstable. This amounts to a negative trade balance of about €240 billion every year. These are largely marked by political instability and/or are used energy resources as a geopolitical weapon. The EU Energy policy aims at achieving three objectives that are complementary and mutually reinforcing, namely security of supply, sustainability and competitiveness.
Means to support these have already been taken. EU is investing significantly in new technologies regarding renewable energies and has a goal outlined that by 2020, 20% of the total energy consumption from EU shall be renewable energies, increasing energy efficiency by 20% and an incorporation of biofuels by 10%. This objective is part of the Climate and Energy Package (ECCP), December 2008, aimed at tackling climate change and ensuring secure sufficient energy supplies within the EU.
Other programs must be highlighted: Energy efficiency for the 2020 goal, Action Plan for Energy Efficiency (2007-2012), Green Paper on energy efficiency, Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) (2007-2013), and The Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund.
2. SAVE ENERGY Objectives
SAVE ENERGY aims to transform the energy consumption behaviour of public building users – focusing on civil servants, citizens and policy makers – by applying existing ICT-based solutions, specifically energy management systems, serious games and real-time information about consumption in a user-friendly way, thereby empowering citizens to take decisions that lead to energy savings. The knowledge and experience gained with the understanding of new socio-technical aspects related to energy saving behaviour transformation using user-driven open innovation environments (Living Labs) will lead to new ICT-based services, new business models and recommendations for Energy Efficiency public policies. The objective of the Living Lab is to include the users in the project and pilot and from that explore possible ideas and inputs that they might have. The project is supported by the “ICT for Sustainable Growth” Unit with funds from ICT – PSP part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme.
SAVE ENERGY brings together 15 partners, including public authorities, public agencies, universities, research institutes, SMEs and corporations to implement 5 Energy Efficiency Pilots, located at Helsinki (Public Schools), Lisbon (City Technical Services), Leiden (City Administrative Services), Luleå (Cultural Services) and Manchester (Art Gallery). The public authorities that own the Pilots are committed to implement the Energy Efficiency results in other buildings and to proactively be involved in a European wide communication strategy.
The pilots will be submitted to the above mentioned solutions with changeable time possibilities. Figure 1 illustrates the sequential added impact of the solutions adopted along with time.
Figure 1 - Solutions implementation and impact on energy consumption
Solutions were co-designed to be implemented by the pilots and demonstrate the objective of the project: that it is possible to save energy by reducing energy consumption therefore contributing for a more efficient use of energy.
3. Methodologies
I. Living Lab Methodology
The Living Lab methodology consists in the evaluation of a product in a real-life environment and over a determined period of time. By using Living Labs, researchers can obtain a deeper understanding about how people interact with products, finding constraints or new features, leading to the development of a better product, more adequate to user needs and expectations, increasing bigger success in user acceptation.
The choice of this methodology is based on a view of the importance of behavioral change and that there are many technical solutions on the market to meet the needs for this project, however, its penetration and use by the user remain low.
The idea of choosing public buildings as pilots was also to create as much awareness as possible about Energy Efficiency and how we all can contribute to reduce energy consumption and here the Living Lab is playing a vital role in the creation of awareness. The energy management system and knowledge repository helps users to understand the critical incidents connected to energy consumption in a public building, facilitate awareness and change behaviour.
II. User Communities Build-up and Engagement
The SAVE ENERGY dissemination strategy aggregates Web 2.0 tools, services and communities to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among all stakeholders. The information and the interaction occur in both the public and the private sphere. The SAVE ENERGY Web 2.0 tools include several applications for messaging and collaboration among the inner core of the stakeholders, with emphasis on the consortium partners, therefore promoting the interaction between users. The SAVE ENERGY Web 2.0 services syndicates data to and from the building management systems and operate as a broker of information for the real time information systems and the serious game. The high level Social Information Architecture is represented in Figure 2.
Figure 2 - SAVE ENERGY Social Information Architecture.
The SAVE ENERGY Web 2.0 communities provide a social networking platform to build online communities of practice where users can share or participate on location, interests and activities of other users using Living Lab methodologies. These communities are closed linked with best of the breed Web 2.0 tools to share blogging and micro blogging posts, podcasts, documents, videos, bookmarks, presentations and photos. The SAVE ENERGY Portal aggregates information from all the other components through widgets, RSS feeds, links, add-ons and embedding of applications and multimedia resources.
These methodologies drove the project to develop the SAVE ENERGY Vision with system requirements and translating them into a conceptual framework and system architecture, including the design of a user-driven co-creative methodology to produce the pilot requirements and specifications with other pilots, to analyse the commercial equipment for Energy Efficiency, selecting the criteria to implement in each one of the pilots. Also to establish a game design blog and creating “cardbox” prototypes of the SAVE ENERGY Serious Games.
4. User Behaviour Transformation Tools
I. Technical Platform
The Five Pilots mentioned above, have been equipped with sensors, smart metering and control devices (Energy Efficiency Management System) acting upon the electrical appliances (energy consumption). The gathered data is inputted to the real time information system and combined with best practice models that generate real time information, consumption alerts and recommendations, thus empowering the users. The impact of serious games and real time information on the energy consumption achieves the consumer behaviour transformation which is expected to lead to significant and sustainable energy savings. The results are also the basis for the creation of new indicators, metrics and best practices that provide the input for new buildings/spaces design and policy recommendations.
The SAVE ENERGY ICT Platform for Energy Efficiency management has been designed, based on a local platform installed at each Pilot building and a central platform where information for all the pilots is further analysed and compared to Energy Efficiency Models. The interaction with the users takes place locally or remotely by using Internet and Wireless access. The management system is an open system that can be connected to any devices.
II. Serious Game
The SAVE ENERGY Serious Games play a pivotal role in aligning the different stakeholders’ expectations, thus contributing to a collective mindset that facilitates cooperation. The virtual environment evolves according to the usage scenarios that are defined by; best practices, experts and the pilot users. The Serious Game has been co-designed with the user groups and consolidated by the Serious Game Working Group.
The different stages of the development have been pilot tested by the users. The game play logic derives from the development of the usage scenarios and contemplates different levels of gaming and targeting audiences, while sharing the common goal of providing players an educational context on energy efficiency. The pilots are used to trigger and sustain the motivation for game playing. This game playing is stimulated by appropriate communication and marketing activities that sustain the engagement of the users. The individual results of game players can be made available to the social network of choice of the player through simple to use syndication mechanisms. The use of Web 2.0 tools allows multiplying the traditional results obtained by classical multiplayer games. In Figure 3 there is a screen-shot example of the “Green My Place” game developed within the SAVE ENERGY project.
Figure 3 - SAVE ENERGY Serious Game web portal “Green My Place”.
This game has been recognized and awarded as the best non-professional functional learning game by Ludus Project.
5. Conclusions
SAVE ENERGY system is expected to achieve energy savings of up to 20% by consumer behaviour transformation. SAVE ENERGY pilots will provide clear and motivating best practices cases for European adoption in public and private buildings.
The SAVE ENERGY integrated ICT energy efficiency management system and the wide proactive dissemination of results and effective replications encouraged and supported by sustainable energy policies will contribute to the development of new ICT based market opportunities in this domain of Energy Efficiency.
The accelerated take-up will also be supported by new business models that will overcome the current difficulties of the fragmented European market where any energy efficiency installation faces the issues of multiple vendors of non- interoperable devices and systems.
The SAVE ENERGY high level architecture and integration guidelines will facilitate and accelerate the implementation of energy efficiency policies. Recommendations for energy efficiency policies at European, National and Regional levels will be supported by high level political exposure and engagement.
Text: Dr. Álvaro Oliveira
