Traveling Exhibition

Smarter Living for a Better Future

 

Generating a New Understanding of Energy Efficiency as a Key to Sustainable Development.

The traveling exhibition Smarter Living: The 2,000-Watt Society is brought to the United States by the U.S.-wide program ThinkSwiss – Brainstorm the Future in collaboration with Cleantech Switzerland and the City of Zurich. ThinkSwiss is an official program of the Swiss Confederation under the auspices of Presence Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research.As a leader in science, research, and technology, Switzerland works with its U.S. counterparts to address the challenges of sustainability and find solutions that benefit our world.

• TOUR DATES A traveling exhibition coming to your city.
• POTENTIAL All about limited resources, peak oil, climate change and more.
• MINERGIE A building standard with health, comfort, and environmental benefits.
• EXAMPLES Environmentally sustainable and zero-carbon projects are a reality.
• 2000 WATTS How much is 2,000 Watts? What can you and your city do?
• ON THE WAY TO THE 2000-WATT SOCIETY Zurich's path

Smarter Living – The 2,000 Watt Society is presented to you in association with:

Smarter Living Made Easy - An Introduction   

The 2000-Watt Society is a vision in which each person in the developed world would gradually reduce their energy needs to 2,000 watts without giving up their quality of life. Although this is meant to be a metaphor for a sustainable future based on reduced energy use and CO2 emissions, Novatlantis – the organization tasked with advancing this vision – is encouraging each and every one of us to make simple changes to our lifestyle and embrace these ambitious goals.

By Elana Caro

Meet the Schmidts: a family of four living in a 170 square meter duplex near Bern. Their 10-year old house was built with solar collectors and photovoltaic cells, and they recently installed a heat pump to meet most of their heating needs. The Schmidts own a car, but both parents use a bicycle or public transportation to get to work while the children walk to school. Vacations are spent in Switzerland in family friendly hotels surrounded by nature. The family tries to buy organic foods that are locally or regionally produced and enjoy cooking with products that are in season. They consume meat only once or twice per week. The Schmidts limit their purchases of consumer products: clothing and shoes are worn for as long as possible, allowing the family to put money aside to purchase energy efficient appliances when the old ones no longer work as they should.
Meet Novatlantis: the organization that wants to show how people like the fictitious Schmidt family are able to live on a per capita rate of energy consumption of 3,500 watts – nearly half the Swiss average – and still enjoy a high quality of life. Founded in 2001 by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Novatlantis takes the findings and results of recent research conducted at the different ETH institutes and implements projects that demonstrate what a sustainable future for major urban settlements could look like.

Swiss-made future

That future is the 2000-Watt Society. According to the ETH, the current global rate of energy consumption per capita is 2,000 watts, which corresponds to the continuous output of twenty 100-watt light bulbs. But there are tremendous regional disparities. In many African and Asian countries, the rate is only a few hundred watts per year whereas in the USA it is slightly over 12,000. “We are currently living at the expense of future generations,” says Roland Stulz, Executive Director at Novatlantis. He believes that Switzerland can gradually reduce its per capita energy consumption from 6,500 watts to 3,500 watts by 2050 and down to 2,000 watts by 2150, with a corresponding reduction in per capita CO2 output from the present nine tons down to one ton.

Landmark projects, world class cities

Until now, Novatlantis has focused on working with the cities of Basel, Zurich and Geneva to demonstrate what changes are needed in major urban centers to advance the vision of the 2000-Watt Society. Projects include testing near-zero emissions vehicles, promoting sustainable urban renewal development projects, studying innovative building technologies and researching renewable sources of energy. Perhaps its greatest success was in 2008 when the residents of Zurich – Switzerland’s largest city and financial engine – voted by a resounding 75 percent in favor of achieving the ambitious goals of the 2000-Watt Society by 2050.

From the ground up

One of the most immediate ways to reduce energy consumption is by improving how we build, which is why Novatlantis tests sustainable construction technologies and holds building forums in Zurich and Basel each year. This is also why the city of Zurich wants most of its new construction to correspond to the Minergie standard, a Swiss energy efficiency building standard that seeks to reduce final energy consumption without sacrificing comfort or affordability. Over 22,000 buildings have been Minergie certified to date. This year it introduced the even more stringent Minergie A standard, keeping the label steps ahead of national building standards.

Individual will

But fully realizing the vision of the 2000-Watt Society requires so much more than energy efficient buildings or smarter mobility solutions or a fossil-free energy supply. And there is no single model or recipe for success. It will involve policy that sets basic frameworks and regulations, new technological innovations and the will of each and every individual to reduce their energy needs.
This is where Novatlantis’s new emphasis on developing lifestyle models comes into play. “We need to show people examples of different lifestyles – from single households to families – and how they live, how much energy they consume and which activities they can take to reduce their energy needs,” explains Stulz. “We want to motivate people,” he says, “to show them that it’s not terribly difficult.”

It’s not the Middle Ages

The biggest obstacle that Novatlantis faces at this time is people’s fears that adjusting our lifestyle to meet the vision of the 2000-Watt Society “would bring us back to the Middle Ages,” says Stulz. Vivian Joyce of the Department of Environment and Energy in Basel, which has its own 2000-Watt Society department, agrees: “The human mind is very set and doesn’t like change much. Our biggest challenge is to convince people that it hasn’t been so long ago since people were living like this. We can do this again if we just use our heads a bit more.”
Switzerland’s per capita energy consumption was 2,000 watts as recent as 1960. With all the technological advances made in recent years, there is good reason to believe that our life will be far more comfortable than it was 50 years ago even if we drastically cut back our energy use.

A range of choices

The lifestyle models that Novatlantis wants to develop will show how people can make individual sustainable choices with regard to housing, mobility, food and consumption, just like the fictitious Schmidt family. As Stulz is quick to point out, what’s most important is to take the first step: “It’s like sports: you don’t start off with a high performance sport. You do a bit of running first to warm up your muscles. That’s exactly what we have to do otherwise we’ll find it too difficult and end up frustrated.”

Change is coming

In neighboring Germany, the municipalities of Singen and Radolfszell launched a program earlier this year with Novatlantis, challenging 10 households of different sizes to voluntarily reduce their energy consumption over the course of one year. The households meet once per month to receive tips and advice, as well as to discuss their experiences with each other. And 2000-Watt Society is garnering attention worldwide, with more and more countries looking to adopt similar programs under different names.
This is a sign that “a change in attitude is palpable,” says Stulz. And while he is quick to admit that much more must be done before the ambitious goals of the 2000-Watt Society are realized, technological innovations and an understanding of sustainable lifestyle that adjusts – but doesn’t drastically reduce – our quality of life will carry us towards that future.