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While emissions trading systems (ETS) have become centerpieces of market-based environmental regulation in many countries, they suffer from two major issues. First, they typically cover only a subset of emissions thereby undermining static cost-effectiveness of pollution control as marginal abatement costs are not equalized across all sources.

Efficient building energy management has attracted a great interest due to significant potential energy savings. One obvious challenge is how to combine the efforts by engineers on improving the energy management system with approaches of social scientists to integrate the occupants actively in the energy management system.

Heating is the main contributor to energy consumption in households. However, many heating systems still run on fixed schedules, ignoring the fact that heating is in principle only necessary when the home is occupied. Modern sensor-based smart thermostats try to optimize this situation. But when do the expected savings justify the installation of occupancy-aware systems?

We are happy to announce some recent staff changes at the ESC. Our two valued collegues, Pedro Crespo del Granado and Lisa Bettoni, have finished their employment at the ESC, we wish them all the best in their future endeavors. In turn, we are happy to welcome our new member, Tanja Meier.

Traditional approaches to foster resource conservation include efficiency (infrastructure) upgrades, price increases, and information campaigns. In the past few years, behavioral interventions have received attention as politically feasible and cost-effective alternative solution. A field study with 2120 participants in Singapore assesses the effectiveness of real-time feedback to mitigate water scarcity.