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Interventions aiming at behavioral change are common tools for assessing and stimulating environmentally friendly lifestyles. To obtain representative and scalable results from the interventions, the experimental design of the interventions is crucial. Likewise, an operational plan is significant concerning the coherence and consistency of the interventions and the comparability of the results from different interventions. Such a guideline contributes to the design, execution, and supervision of the interventions, provides standardisation and enhances collaboration with the intervention partners. Intervention guidelines also pertain to the strategic planning of data requirements and collection procedures. Based on the work conducted within the context of the EU-funded ENCHANT project, the guidelines presented in this manuscript are structured based on the key phases of planning and design, implementation, and analysis and reporting. Another key area that needs to be considered and included in the guidelines is the planning necessities for the administrative structure for the interventions. This includes allocating staff roles and responsibilities and potential challenges and obstacles that may arise during implementation. Ethical concerns are also addressed., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The handling editor GC declared a past co-authorship with the authors. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision., (Copyright © 2024 Biresselioglu and Demir.)

Introduction: The link between lifestyles and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions has prioritized climate mitigation strategies of cities worldwide. As cities have increasingly generated GHG emissions by their industrial and transportation activities, their role in climate mitigation has gained prominence. Cities' climate mitigation policies to reduce the GHG intensity of their residents' daily lives are one of their significant efforts to tackle climate change. Lighthouse Cities (LCs), in particular, have emerged as remarkable actors in promoting lifestyle changes for their residents., Methods: This study examines climate mitigation strategies of LCs of Climate CAMPAIGNers project, including Baku, Vilnius, Lahti, Izmir, Trujillo, Athens, Linz, Milan, Cape Town, Dublin, and Skopelos, addressing lifestyle changes by conducting an expert survey in 11 LCs involving 89 respondents. The findings of the expert survey are comparatively analyzed across 11 LCs., Results: The results show that experts form Lighthouse Cities identify increasing awareness and information provision as a significant component of climate mitigation policies. Concerning lifestyle changes, strategies toward energy efficiency and sustainable mobility are highlighted as the primary areas to be prioritized., Discussion: This study enhances the understanding of cities' capacity to reduce their residents' GHG emissions. The findings can be utilized to identify and tailor policies for supporting the Lighthouse Cities in their climate change mitigation efforts and provide pointers for selecting the lifestyle changes that can be promoted and prioritized in Lighthouse Cities., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision., (Copyright © 2024 Biresselioglu, Savas, Demir and Kentmen-Cin.)

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of field experiments utilizing social norms, commitment and price-based interventions to promote energy conservation, load shifting, and energy efficiency behaviors. Treatment effects reported in the extant literature, as well as the factors that may strengthen or dampen these effects are reviewed. We find that social norm and incentive-based interventions mostly achieve small reductions in energy consumption, and that the effects of commitment-based interventions are essentially zero for the most part. Incentive effects on energy efficiency investments are mostly non-existent, safe for a few exceptions. One gap that we identify is the almost complete absence of field experiments leveraging social norms or commitment to promote energy efficiency investments. We discuss a broad range of (mostly under-researched) plausible moderators of the interventions' effects. Crucially, a more careful attention to moderators in future research can highlight instances in which interventions can be effective, notwithstanding their modest or non-existent average treatment effects. Our review offers a starting point in this regard., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Vesely, Klöckner, Carrus, Tiberio, Caffaro, Biresselioglu, Kollmann and Sinea.)

With the continued digitization of the energy sector, the problem of sunken scholarly data investments and forgone opportunities of harvesting existing data is exacerbating. It compounds the problem that the reproduction of knowledge is incomplete, impeding the transparency of science-based targets for the choices made in the energy transition. The FAIR data guiding principles are widely acknowledged as a way forward, but their operationalization is yet to be agreed upon within different research domains. We comprehensively test FAIR data practices in the low carbon energy research domain. 80 databases representative for data needed to support the low carbon energy transition are screened. Automated and manual tests are used to document the state-of-the art and provide insights on bottlenecks from the human and machine perspectives. We propose action items for overcoming the problem with FAIR energy data and suggest how to prioritize activities., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

There is broad agreement in literature and policy that the transport sector needs to maximise electric mobility, in order to lower both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This ongoing transformation continues to require a high degree of technological innovation. Consequently, policymakers are striving to reward innovation in procurement tender contracts, in order to achieve sustainable innovation. At the same time, such contracts are often designed with a principle of technology neutrality in mind, to prevent any distortion of the market logic. This article suggests that it is misguided to try to perfect the logic of the tender system and that articulating contract that rewards innovation is no guarantee of a sustainable solution. Rather than being technological , the problem should be seen as moral : the mounting environmental challenge. Policymakers thus have clear ideas about the action needed based on what they, through moral conviction, consider to be appropriate action. This case study-conducted as a part of the EU H2020-funded ECHOES Project under Work Package 6-on the electrification of the Flakk-Rørvik ferry connexion reveals how policymakers were able to achieve the intended results: in this case, an e-ferry rather than a biodiesel ferry, in spite of, rather than because of, the tender system logic. They achieved this by involving stakeholders in the process with a continuous and uninterrupted dialogue. The project stakeholders were able to intervene in the tender system logic in favour of human considerations. We argue that this project was a success because human judgement, not system logic, was the driving force. By extension, we argue that systems will only allow policymakers to pursue moral issues to the degree that they allow human intervention., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Berntsen, Sæther, Røyrvik, Biresselioglu and Demir.)

This study presents the case of a Metropolitan Municipality in the Aegean Region of Turkey, which undertook a series of initiatives to conduct projects on environmental protection and sustainability. This case study was conducted as two separate studies as a part of Horizon 2020-funded ECHOES project under Work Package 6, aiming to gain insight into the collective magnitudes of energy-related choices and behavior. The starting point of the process is marked, in 2015, by the municipality becoming a party to the Covenant of Mayors movement, joining around 8,000 signatories from over 50 countries. In line with European Union's (EU's) climate targets and associated energy-related policies, signatories of the Covenant of Mayors aim to decrease carbon emissions by 20% by 2020 and by 40% by 2030. In order to enhance the design and operationalization of policies for achieving these targets, each partner in the Covenant of Mayors is required to develop a Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP). The SEAP is to be prepared within 2 years of becoming a party to the Covenant of Mayors and involves action plans and projects in order to operationalize the strategies for achieving the associated targets. To this end, this study analyzes the Metropolitan Municipality's SEAP and its components, which include zero-emission public transportation project, transformation of existing buildings to a more energy-efficient standard and related energy audit studies, a project for decreasing waiting periods in traffic via a Smart Traffic System, a pedestrianization project, and a project for increasing the use of geothermal energy for district heating. This study set out to identify the internal and external factors, as well as bottom-up and top-down mechanisms involved in various phases of the preparation and implementation of the SEAP. The research method was expert interviews, incorporating viewpoints and perceptions of stakeholders from different levels of the municipality. Among the key results are understanding the roles of enthusiasts and frontrunners in such initiative and the importance of top-management and central government support., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Biresselioglu and Demir.)

The Arctic Region experienced a series of significant changes due to shifting climate conditions, resulting in multiple opportunities and challenges for international actors, and encouraging both Arctic and non-Arctic states to promote their own national interests. Hence, the region has become a global priority, and a focus of scientific studies across the Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) disciplines. This study systematically analyses the literature on the Arctic Region, conducting a multidimensional bibliometric analysis and content analysis on the basis of semantic clustering. The purpose of the analysis is to determine future Arctic-related research themes. The study follows a three-level research framework. The first level of the analysis highlights a disciplinary shift in the Arctic literature from Natural Sciences towards Social Sciences and Humanities, particularly, focusing on the environment, technology, political and energy-related issues. The second level identifies 9 research themes which are validated in the third level. The third level reveals the most prominent terms and prioritized research areas in the Arctic literature, namely, Governance, Security Issues, Economic Factors, Legal Issues, Energy and Natural Resources, Logistics, Climate Change and Environment, Technology, and Socio-cultural and Ethnic Issues., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors whose names are listed immediately below certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educational grants; participation in speakers' bureaus; membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest; and expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements), or non-financial interest (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This paper presents the results of a qualitative study exploring the role of formal social units in the sustainable energy transition process. A small community in North-east Italy was assumed as case study, in the context of a wider EU-funded research project aimed at understanding the individual and collective dimensions of energy-related choices. Starting from a general framework and integrated approach to explain sustainable energy transitions proposed by Steg et al. (2015), the main aim of our study was to identify the psychological and social factors that motivated the key actors to undertake an energy self-sufficiency path in the case-study area. Our analyses aimed at understanding the social, cultural, and socioeconomic dynamics in the energy transition process of the community. The study outlined how these factors contributed to foster collaborative actions between public decision makers, relevant stakeholders, civil society, and citizens. Results of a computer-supported qualitative content analysis using the software MAXQDA helped to shed light on the specific mechanisms and dynamics driving energy choices and energy-related behavior among the community. The implication for best practices and successful implementations of energy transition process in small communities emerging from this case study are discussed., (Copyright © 2020 Tiberio, De Gregorio, Biresselioglu, Demir, Panno and Carrus.)