The second CORPUS workshop on Sustainable Housing was held 15-16 March 2012 in Helsinki, Finland, on the premises of the Finnish Ministry of Environment. Its focus was «Policy instruments» for sustainable housing, and more than 40 participants from all over Europe including policy-makers, researchers and civil society representatives participated. The agenda for the event is available here.

The key objectives of the workshop were to:

• Learn from good policy practices in sustainable housing from other European countries.

• Share knowledge of how to promote the politics of sustainable housing both in organisations, businesses and the scientific community.

• Provide a networking opportunity with other European policy makers, researchers and civil society representatives in the SCP field.

• Identify the needs for further research, and co-develop a research agenda on sustainable housing.

• Using innovative and effective methods for knowledge brokerage.

The workshop was opened by Director General Helena Säteri from the Finnish Ministry of Environment. The CORPUS coordinator, Dr. Gerd Scholl of the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), presented the background of the project, an overview of knowledge brokerage, and the goals of the three workshops in his introduction.

Dr. Márton Herczeg from the Copenhagen Resource Institute (CRI) built a bridge between the first and the second workshop on sustainable housing by summarizing  the knowledge and insights of researchers and policy makers, based on the results of the voting over policy instruments at the first workshop, telephone interviews with researchers and policy makers conducted prior to the workshop, and mind maps from the first workshop. He highlighted four common aspects; consumer behaviour, the need to improve sustainable building design, innovative technology and new materials, and more compact urban planning.

To set the stage, Dr. Pål Strandbakken from the National Institute for Consumer Research (SIFO) and chair of the housing workshop series, presented and overview of policy instruments in the area. He presented three different types of policy instruments for increased sustainability in the housing sector, namely regulatory, market based, and information based instruments. A discussion paper on these policies had been distributed to participants prior to the workshop. In an interactive group exercise, each table was then asked to reflect and discuss the different perceptions of policy priorities and policy approaches, to suggest sets of policy tools to deal with these questions, and to report their main points in plenary.

The second main component, in addition to the workshop series, is the CORPUS website. The website of the project provides a space for knowledge sharing and online dialogue. Prof. Harri Kalimo and Alex Daniell, Institute for European Studies (IES), gave a quick introduction to the basic functionalities and the interactive parts of the website, and introduced the project’s new Facebook site.

In the afternoon, an introduction to global and European policies for sustainable housing was held. To address the European issues, Josefina Lindblom from the European Commission, DG Environment, presented  the Roadmap to a resource efficient Europe with a focus on buildings. At the global scale, Maike Christiansen from UNECE presented an overview of the UNECE’s policy guidelines and housing sector profiles.

To further narrow down the discussion on policy learning, cases of success, and implementation of concrete policy instruments, several approaches was presented in three break-out groups:

The first group had an Eastern European focus, and Lucia Ilieva from Club Sustainable Development of Civil Society presented challenges of NMS in housing, using Bulgaria as an example. Marko Hren from the Office for Development and European Affairs at the Government of Slovenia gave a speech on the case of Slovenia, emphasising the use of regulatory policy instruments.

The second break-out group presented policy instruments from the Nordic countries. Kirsten Gram-Hanssen from the Danish Building Research Institute gave an input on the evaluation of the Danish energy labelling of buildings, and Peter Fredriksson from the Helsinki region Environmental Service Authority presented some trends in the Finnish housing policies, focusing on results and problems in combining economic, social and ecological sustainability.

The third flashlight, Lewis Akenji from the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies presented the case of China in applicability of building energy codes in Asian countries. 

On the second day of the workshop, Gerald Berger from RIMAS gave a presentation of a research agenda on sustainable housing in CORPUS, and the results of interviews with researchers regarding the “hot topics” of current and future research within the field of sustainable housing. After the presentation, participants were divided into three working groups – each a mix of researchers, policy-makers and civil society representatives – where they were asked to brainstorm on key topics of sustainable housing that research should address. The session ended with a plenary presentation of each group’s topics.

The last session of the second workshop focused on scenarios for sustainable housing, and served as an introduction to the third and last CORPUS workshop. Dr. Pål Strandbakken briefly presented the scenario building concept, along with a few examples of such scenario work. Adèle Seyrig from Strategic Design Scenarios held the first scenario building exercise, where participants made a “brick wall” of sustainable housing scenarios.

The outcomes, ideas and knowledge generated for, and during, the workshop are all available on the CORPUS website. To remember and share with others this stimulating two day experience, you may want to have a look at the pictures taken at the workshop.

The third housing workshop will take place on 7-8 June 2012 in Helsinki, Finland. We are looking forward to seeing you again.

Dr. Pål Strandbakken – on behalf of the CORPUS consortium