Accelerate innovation towards sustainable living: exploring the potential of Living Labs in a recently completed case

Abstract

The built environment accounts for over one-third of both global final energy use and CO2 emissions. This sector is, however, particularly prone to 'lock-in' with many strong barriers hindering the market uptake of sustainable innovations. Additionally, various studies have shown that user behaviour may outweigh efficiency improvements achieved through technological innovations in buildings. The emerging area of Living Labs has been proposed as a means to accelerate the development of innovations in the building sector. This paper elaborates on challenges for sustainable living from a wide perspective and explores the potential of Living Labs to address some of these challenges in order to accelerate innovation. The research environment for the study is a newly built Living Lab located in the south-west region of Sweden.