2020

The new report coming out of the ETH Global Recycling Survey 2020 focuses on the current state of the recycling industry and its perception of future developments

Although bidirectional charging of electric vehicles could support the integration of renewable energy into the electricity system, its future remains uncertain. How could the implementation of bidirectional charging look like and which challenges remain?

A scientific article authored by Joern Hoppmann has been accepted for publication in Research Policy.

Johannes Meuer was awarded VSETH's Golden Owl 2020 for the MTEC Department.

The entire SusTec team congratulates Marius Schwarz for the successful completion and defense of his doctoral thesis entitled “The role of Policies for the Diffusion of Low-Carbon Technologies and their System Integration: Energy Transitions in Switzerland and California” on December 3rd, 2020.

We’re happy to welcome Paul Adler (University of Southern California) to the SusTec Colloquium on 3 December 2020 (16.30 – 18.00).

Mohamed joins Sustec in November 2020 to conduct his thesis on Corpoate Sustainability through the lenses of the UN SDGs.

We already know much about the innovation effects of deployments policies such as the German Feed-in Tariff. But how do such policies affect complementary innovations, e.g. in battery technology?

Willem Laumen joins Sustec from RWTH Aachen to conduct his thesis on theoptimization of operational strategies of grid-connected large scale battery storage systems

An interdisciplinary group of 18 researchers from 9 different nations spent 5 days virtually at the 13th annual ETH Academy on Sustainability and Technology, hosted by SusTec.

Arber is a MSc student in Management, Technology and Economics and joins the team as a research assistant.

SusTec and sus.lab welcome Marian Krüger, who has recently joined sus.lab as Project Lead Decarbonisation following a successful startup venture in the photovoltaics space.

Aaron joins Sustec in September 2020 to conduct his master thesis with Christine and Annegret on electricity load profiles and load shifting in the energy transition.

Qing Xu joined SusTec in September 2020 to write his master thesis.

The entire SusTec teams congratulates Alejandro Nuñez-Jimenez for the successful completion and defense of his doctoral thesis entitled “Energy policy for the transition: Designing policies for harnessing technological change” on August 25th, 2020.

When transitions accelerate this creates new challenges for research and policy. In a new open access article, we highlight five challenges and discuss their policy implications.

Energy storage is vital for integrating renewable energy. Already for urban distributed energy systems, off-the-shelf technologies consisting of renewables, heat pumps, along with batteries and hot water storage can reduce CO2 emissions by 90% cost-effectively.

What effects will digital building technology have on the building sector? How can decision-makers in politics and business exploit the potential of digitization? What does digitization in the building sector mean for innovation, competition, education and labor market policy? Our newly published report «Digital Trends in the Building Industry 2020» answers these questions and shows the diverse opportunities and risks of digitization in the building sector.

Can electricity pricing leverage electric vehicles and battery storage to integrate high shares of solar photovoltaics? New SusTec study outlines the role for electric vehicles in future electricity systems.  

The time for digital new interaction formats is now. Digital interaction formats have successfully substituted physical conferences during the COVID-19 pandemic and will be part of a new regime in the field of academic exchange.

Analyzing responses from policy consultations, Jochen Markard (SusTec) and Daniel Rosenbloom (University of Toronto) find, among other issues, that many prominent industrial actors "support the EU ETS not because it will drive a low-carbon transition but because it will not".

Jochen Markard (SusTec) and Daniel Rosenbloom (University of Toronto) argue that the response to the coronavirus outbreak also offers an opportunity to advance the climate agenda. Indeed, given that we have scarce resources at our disposal, it is essential that we synergize such efforts.

SusTec and sus.lab re-welcome Dianne Hondeborg who joins sus.lab as a Project Manager following her Master thesis.

Leandro joined SusTec in May 2020 for his master thesis on 2nd life batteries in the context of stationary storage systems.  

In a perspective published in Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Sebastian Kahlert and Catharina Bening outline why the future of plastics recycling could be determined by the path society takes in combating economic aftermath of COVID-19.

“Leveraging COVID-19 recovery programs to simultaneously advance the climate agenda presents a strategic opportunity to transition toward a more sustainable post–COVID-19 world.” write Daniel Rosenbloom (University of Toronto) and Jochen Markard (SusTec) in the editorial of this week’s Science Magazine.

A new article finds that, at a global scale, nuclear is in decline and there is little hope that new, current-type nuclear power plants will make a big difference for fighting climate change. While this might not come as a big surprise to experts in the field, our study is the first to apply the technological innovation systems framework to analyze technology decline.

Carbon pricing has limitations with regard to effective and fundamental transformations of industries and society. Daniel Rosenbloom, Jochen Markard, Frank Geels and Lea Fünfschilling present core principles of “sustainability transition policy” to address climate change.

Phasing-out coal fired power generation is a key strategy to combat climate change. Under certain conditions coal phase-out can happen much more quickly than anticipated, finds a new study by Karoliina Isoaho and Jochen Markard.

A new article addressing the question "Can designs inspired by control theory keep deployment policies effective and cost-efficient as technology prices fall?" has been published by the journal "Environmental Research Letters". The article is authored by Alejandro Nuñez-Jimenez, Christof Knoeri, Joern Hoppmann, and Volker Hoffmann.

In this report, Johannes explains what types of digital building technologies to look out for.

SusTec researchers offer new business model seminar in the realm of the Circular Economy

Tudor joined SusTec in February 2020 to write his Master's thesis on corporate sustainability.

Sebastian joined SusTec in February 2020 as a PhD candidate on plastics recycling and circular economy.

The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (BFE) has developed a series of info videos with important energy-related research projects that the ministry is supporting