Academic and industrial projects regarding innovation and sustainability!

ASCEND The EU-funded project ASCEND seeks to speed up and scale the implementation of positive, clean energy districts (PCED) across Europe. For this, we will jointly realize solutions and business models in fields ranging from energy communities to mobility and energy-efficient buildings in eight European cities.

Researching Smart Cities with a special focus on sustainable scaling is a focus of our institute. We work in a consortium of four Swiss research institutes on a three-year project titled “Scaling Smart City Projects - from Individual pilots towards a Common strategy of industry Emergence (SPICE)”. The SPICE project is part of the National Research Programme on “Digital Transformation” (NRP 77). As experts in innovation and business models, we seek to analyze and conceptualize smart city initiatives from a business model perspective.

The SUSMOBTOGG project (2021-2024) focuses on identifying sustainable mobility concepts for rural areas in Switzerland across six work packages. Toggenburg serves as a case study here.

The goal of CoSi (Co-Evolution and Coordinated Simulation of the Swiss Energy System and Swiss Society) is to explore the interactions between political, regulatory and societal frameworks and the evolution of the energy system. This transdisciplinary expertise from the natural sciences, engineering, economics, social sciences and the humanities will be incorporated into simulation models and enable more meaningful scenario analyses to successfully shape the energy transition.

Together with our industry partner Siemens, we explore the potential of the Metaverse.