Research

The RESET.Go eGen innovation laboratory and the RESET lighthouse project focus on testing the energy transition in rural areas with a more digital and adaptive approach. A web-based planning methodology is made available to the public and calculates optimal energy technologies, their capacities and sector-coupled operations as well as renovation and flexibility potentials. In real-world implementation, existing and newly implemented (measurement) infrastructures are embedded in a homogenising data architecture in order to ideally regulate analyses and optimisations of energy technologies and consumers. Regional consumers are networked with each other across various disciplines through the innovation laboratory and have the opportunity to optimally create decentralised energy networks, to participate financially in regional energy technologies and to actively contribute to the energy status.

ENERGY4ALL aims at developing energy configurations as a common pool resource, testing thecommunity dimension in the design and implementation of emergent Positive Energy Districts (PED)and Energy Communities (EC). The project explores an inclusive governance model throughsupportive toolboxes for the design and implementation of participatory energy governance andreplicable pathways for PEDs/ECs.The project operates with an open definition of EC, including both as a set of households producingand consuming energy, as well as users of a common public resource to increase energy efficiency.ENERGY4ALL conceptualises ECs as featuring three constitutive elements in mutual relationship:resource, community and governance. These elements are explored in different cases within the fourpilot cases, Stavanger (Norway), Styria (Austria), Budapest (Hungary) and Rome (Italy), with coverageof various characteristics including urban and industrial sites, territorial scales from household todistrict, and multi-stakeholder involvement of public authorities, private enterprises, researchinstitutions and local citizen groups.

The realisation, respectively maintance of equivalent living conditions in all sub-areas is a focal objective of spatial planning policy in Austria. In this context, the provision of services of general interest is of particular importance. In this project, selected social infrastructures for people of old age will be investigated in order to identify the underlying principles and minimum standards and their relevance for area-wide provision. This will be done by analysing laws as well as relevant documents and obtaining expert opinions. In addition, the governance processes that underpin the status quo of provision are analyised in a selected case study region.