News & Events
2025/11/03 - Energy scenario choices by the European public
Renewable energy is today the cheapest source of electricity available. In order to meet the goals agreed under the Paris Agreement, the share of renewables must be expanded to 100 per cent by the 2030s. However, this expansion comes with an increase in land-use, leading to rising public opposition. How can citizens’ preferences inform the planning of energy systems? This question was addressed by a team of researchers from ETH Zurich, the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences. The researchers developed an approach that enables the evaluation of energy plans not only in terms of technical and economic aspects, but also citizen preferences.
See external page RIFS Potsdam Website for the complete press release.
Publication:
Tim Tröndle, Franziska Mey and Johan Lilliestam: Socially preferable and technically feasible: European citizens choose solar power and import independence over lower Costs, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 129, November 2025, 104364. DOI: external page https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2025.104364
2025/10/10 - Energy Now! 4.0 Challenge: The Re-Volt Kit
At this year’s Energy Now! 4.0 Accelerator, Dr Inga Nienkerke presented the challenge “The Re-Volt Kit: Giving EV Batteries a Second Life in Africa.
”The project tackles the global rise of used EV batteries by developing a portable, low-cost diagnostic tool that enables local technicians to test, sort, and rebuild cells into reliable second-life battery packs.
In collaboration with Solar Taxi Ghana, Mashael Yazdanie and Augusto Espinel, participants will turn waste into power — extending battery lifecycles and enabling affordable energy access across the Global South.
The goal of the Energy Now! 4.0 accelerator program is to come up with intelligent, science-based solutions to energy industry-based problems throughout Switzerland and beyond.
2025/05/30 – CP lab members presented at the NEST Conference
Kristiina Joon presented her work on measures to reduce aviation emissions in the short term at the Early-Career Sustainability Transitions Conference (NEST), taking place at the University of Sussex this year. The conference sessions covered various sustainability themes, ranging from gender equality in mobility to historical analysis of retrofit policy. Kristiina's study looked at how to allocate the burden of reducing aviation emissions by considering four different frameworks, like for instance frequent flyers being the ones to bear this burden.
2025/05/12 – Tony Patt at a hearing of the environmental committee of the Swiss National Assembly
He gave testimony at a hearing of the environmental committee of the Swiss National Assembly. The committee was considering the possibility of creating new support mechanisms for decarbonisation projects. Prof. Patt reported on the empirical literature showing government support for technology and infrastructure to make an important difference in the pace of decarbonisation and in people’s acceptance of measures for phasing out fossil fuel. In doing so, he drew from work undertaken by numerous members of the Climate Policy Lab (external page 1, external page 2).
2025/03/20 – Data Centers in the Urban Energy Transition
external page Jenny Hansson joined the Climate Policy Group in 2025, to work on the potential synergies and trade-offs that arise between data centres and the urban energy transition. Funded by the EU Horizon project Heatwise, a section of the PhD will be dedicated to studying the potential utilisation of waste heat from data centres in an urban context, as well as potential policy pathways to enable the sustainable use of data centres. Jenny is a joint PhD candidate with the Urban Energy System Lab at Empa.
2025/02/13 – CP members present at the Energy Week @ ETH Zürich 2024
The ETH Energy Week was held in November 2024, with active contributions from two CP Lab members. Adrien Mellot had the opportunity to present at the 2024 ETH Energy Week as part of the SWEET PATHFNDR conference. He showed the results of a study reviewing policies aimed at increasing the electrification of energy demand and its flexible operation.
The slides and associated poster can be found here: external page https://sweet-pathfndr.ch/conference2024/#exhibition).
Prof. Anthony Patt was part of the “Coffee with scientists” exchanges, discussing the topic “Will the public even notice the transition to a zero emission society?”.