Sustainable Lifestyles Accelerator
The Sustainable Lifestyle Accelerators for municipalities give households the chance to reduce their carbon footprint in a concrete way during a four-week trial period, with the help of the municipality or city and businesses.
Dozens of accelerators have already been organised in Finland, with hundreds of households participating and planning to reduce their carbon footprint by half on average. Participants have found that reducing their carbon footprint improves their quality of life and, in addition to supporting this, municipalities have gained insight into what changes residents need to make low-carbon lifestyles easier.
The accelerator includes
- 3 footprint calculations: household baseline, roadmap plan to 2030 and emissions reductions during the pilot period
- 2 workshops (2.5h and 2h): a roadmap workshop to plan for the pilot period and 2030 using the Climate Puzzle, and a future workshop to discuss experiences and how to continue
- 1 pilot phase: during the four-week pilot phase, participants will try out actions in their daily lives
- 4 information packs: during the pilot period, participants will receive a weekly newsletter on the accelerator themes by email
- 1 final report: the municipality will receive a report on the accelerator, including the emission reductions achieved and the participants' wishes
- For who: Municipalities and cities
- Number of participants: 1-25 households
- Duration: approximately 2-3 months
- Accelerator workshops can also be organised remotely.
Accelerators in Pyhäjärvi and Tyrnävä
In spring 2022, we organised two sustainable lifestyles accelerators with the city of Pyhäjärvi and the municipality of Tyrnävä. The accelerators were part of the six-year EU LIFE project "Towards Carbon Neutral Municipalities and Regions (CANEMURE)". Participants gave feedback on, for example, the ease of implementing various actions during the pilot phase. The participants also said to have increased the amount of exercise through additional walking and cycling when reducing their driving kilometres, in addition to gaining financial savings when saving energy. The city and municipality, for their part, received a number of concrete suggestions on how to facilitate the low-carbon transition of households.