2023

The second Circular Building UnConference 2023 was a great success! On the 26th of October, the second edition of the Circular Building UnConference took place at Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich and welcomed more than 130 people to exchange innovative and collaborative approaches to transform the building industry towards circularity.

SWIRCULAR, a five-year Flagship supported by Innosuisse, focuses on accelerating the use and interlinkage of digitalization and circular economy in the Swiss construction sector. SusTec will co-lead a work package together with the Berner Fachhochschule.

SusTec’s flagship award-winning lecture on Corporate Sustainability is now more accessible than ever thanks to the first teaching case study published by the group’s team on the Case Center.

SusTec's Senior Researcher Dr. Christof Knoeri addressed the topic of real estate decarbonization and Scope 3 emissions during his presentation at the NZZ Real Estate Days Masterclass held in Davos.

SusTec had the priviledge of organizing this year's ETH Week on Circular Realities with PB Labs. 

Integrated energy system planning at the district level can contribute towards the sustainable transformation of the building sector by unlocking solutions beyond individual buildings. The new paper by Alicia Lerbinger, Evan Petkov, George Mavromatidis and Christof Knoeri investigates optimal decarbonization pathways for existing districts, considering investments in both, energy systems and retrofits.

The new paper by Paula Thimet and Georgios Mavromatidis introduces the MANGOelec optimization model and investigates the optimal mix of energy storage technologies to decarbonize the German electricity system.

Niklas joined the group in August and will focus on corporate transitions towards net zero.

This August a group of SusTec members presented their research at the International Sustainability Conference in Utrecht.

Barbara will support SusTec's "Corporate Sustainability" course from August 2023 onwards

We congratulate Dr. Siobhan Powell for successfully winning an ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship, which she will use to pursue her research on policies for large-scale grid integration of electric vehicles.

Malte Toetzke calls for more ambitious standards in the voluntary carbon offset market. While this would lead to fewer projects getting funded, the benefit for the climate would be greater overall. 

SusTec is pleased to curate this year’s ETH Week topic, exploring the concept of a circular economy. 

Aliénor von Roten joined SusTec in July 2023 to work at sus.lab focusing on carbon removal projects and collaborating closely with the Carbon Removal Accelerator “remove”.

Assessments that integrate different sustainability dimensions are lacking yet necessary to facilitate the implementation of Circular Economy (CE). The new paper by Anna Kulakovskaya, Maja Wiprächtiger, Christof Knoeri and Catharina Bening suggests a novel approach that evaluates and integrates the environmental and economic dimensions of CE at the value-chain level.

Increasing the speed and depth of retrofits is essential to decarbonize the building sector. The new paper by SusTec's Dianne Hondeborg, Benedict Probst, Ivalin Petkov, and Christof Knoeri presents the effectiveness of retrofits under a Swiss subsidy scheme in canton St. Gallen.

Denise will conduct research on the transition to a sustainable circular economy.

Miriam will help drive strategic projects within SusTec.

We congratulate SusTec’s Malte Toetzke, Florian Egli (Energy Policy Group, ETH) and Anna Stünzi (Institute of Political Sciences, HSG) on the awards.

90% of the European existing building stock is expected to still be standing by 2050, making it vital to cost-effectively decarbonize it. The new paper by Ivalin Petkov, Alicia Lerbinger, Georgios Mavromatidis, Christof Knoeri, and Volker Hoffmann presents a new approach for navigating the large decision-space of when to do which retrofitting project (what), on which building (where), and how that impacts economic and environmental performance in future conditions.

Based on a 1-year research project with a European industry consortium that spans the entire value chain of flexible packaging, this paper provides unique insights into the inter-organizational process among firms as they collaboratively make sense of changes required – to transform the value chain from linear to circular, and to align on a common pathway to achieve the required change.

We congratulate our SusTec colleague Benedict Probst and his co-authors on the award.

Cities account for over two-thirds of global primary energy consumption and a similar share of CO2 emissions. A new paper by SusTec Senior Research, Alejandro Nuñez-Jimenez, with Prakhar Mehta (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität) and Danielle Griego (ETH Zurich) shows how community solar policy can accelerate PV adoption in cities to address climate change and reduce local air pollution.

In their new publication, sus.lab and Circularity show how a circular economy transformation can succeed. They analyze why the transformation is often difficult for companies, share recommendations to overcome these challenges, and portray real-life examples.

SusTec Senior Researcher, Alejandro Nuñez-Jimenez, co-authors a letter on Science about the unique challenges young climate policy scientists face in academia and how to overcome them.

Ricarda joins sus.lab as a project manager, primarily working on circular economy projects, focusing specifically on packaging and food waste.